Director: Karen Moncrieff
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 0.0
Bad Teen Poetry Hour meets Wayward Teen After-school Special in this awful film from former actress-turned-director Moncrieff. Sometimes, lenience should be paid to those trying to gain their proverbial footing, but this is just a mess, with Moncrieff writing in so many catastrophes and generating a world so distasteful that it's a miracle the movie's heroine (Agnes Bruckner) doesn't just kill herself in the middle and be done with it. Poetry is seen as something that can only be written if and when your life turns to shit - misery and madness fuel the proverbial fire - and people are viewed as being malevolent and manipulative or just plain crazy (Frances Farmer's unhappy wife character and Bruckner's mystic sister). After serving out scene after scene of children cutting apart their skin, committing suicide, stealing merchandise and drugs, it then turns its only seemingly decent character, a high school English teacher, and shows him to be a fraudulent, guilt-ridden Lothario. The chaos gets so dark that when it strives for a poetic ending - you know the kind, with blue cars and clear skies and potential family togetherness - the 180 in direction causes mental whiplash. This is a vain, ugly movie.
