As Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci) begins to narrate the film, after warning us she's no good, she promises "there's other people a lot nicer coming up". Unfortunately, she doesn't make good on that promise. Not a single likeable person is ever presented to us. She remains the only interesting character (and the only capable actor) and her deadpan, unconventional narration is the movie's sole saving grace. When the story pushes her to the side and demotes her to a supporting role, we have nothing left to focus on but the plot itself. And that's not a good thing.
The movie throws quite a few things at the wall in its attempt to be a provocative, dark comedy and maybe it did stick in 1998 (seemingly, it didn't), but it certainly doesn't now. It would be hard to single out 20 minutes of this movie that haven't aged terribly. Half of it would be seen as mundane and fail to make any impression and the other half would be seen as tacky and problematic. A young gay student lying about being molested by his openly gay professor to blackmail him really didn't sit right with me.
Sadly, the movie lives and dies by the scandalizing nature of its source material, so when that fails to single-handedly make the film interesting, it doesn't have anything else to offer. It just meanders its way through uninteresting and uninterested characters doing illogical things until it reaches an unearned happy ending : After the troublemaker has shaken up their lives, a group of people who were previously lost and confused in their pursuit of sex, love or both, now get everything they never knew they wanted. Except the troublemaker herself, who leaves them behind to follow her own, undisclosed path. Can't say it made an impact.
The movie throws quite a few things at the wall in its attempt to be a provocative, dark comedy and maybe it did stick in 1998 (seemingly, it didn't), but it certainly doesn't now. It would be hard to single out 20 minutes of this movie that haven't aged terribly. Half of it would be seen as mundane and fail to make any impression and the other half would be seen as tacky and problematic. A young gay student lying about being molested by his openly gay professor to blackmail him really didn't sit right with me.
Sadly, the movie lives and dies by the scandalizing nature of its source material, so when that fails to single-handedly make the film interesting, it doesn't have anything else to offer. It just meanders its way through uninteresting and uninterested characters doing illogical things until it reaches an unearned happy ending : After the troublemaker has shaken up their lives, a group of people who were previously lost and confused in their pursuit of sex, love or both, now get everything they never knew they wanted. Except the troublemaker herself, who leaves them behind to follow her own, undisclosed path. Can't say it made an impact.