Pretty Persuasion

Near the beginning of this woefully directionless teen flick, someone tells the joke, “Why is a beer better than a woman?” It takes several scenes and the better part of eternity before they deliver a bevy of punchlines, including, “You don’t have to wash it for it to taste good” and “It’s always wet.” (Those of you with a drum kit at home, feel free to play a rimshot.) Unfortunately, Pretty Persuasion doesn’t get any better. It also wastes the prodigious talents of Evan Rachel Wood as a Beverly Hills hump horse who hurls sexual harassment charges at an innocent doofus of a teacher (Ron Livingston). What could have been a sinfully fun Heathers-style satire lapses into a crude, witless comedy with an uneven script and about as much character development as a Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, this film comes with some buzz—it was one of the most talked about flicks at this past spring's Sundance Film Festival in Utah—but be warned: the air up there is thinner than the so-called comedy in this movie.