The Crush crushes itself under its stars

Alicia Silverstone has had really only one major success (Clueless), but she did have a minor hit. The Crush is a very energetic movie that tries too hard to be good. The actors are good, but Silverstone shines as the psychotic teen that has a crush on Nick (Cary Elwes), a guy that has just moved into an apartment. But the major disappointment is the overall meanness of the movie. The ending of the film is also a disappointment, which I am going to ruin (look further to find out the ending).

The movie begins with Elwes trying to find an apartment. When he almost hits Silverstone, she takes a liking to him. He takes the apartment, luckily next door to her. That is one of the problems with the movie. It is very predictable and makes no effort to surprise us. In fact, the biggest surprise to me is that she isn't killed in the ending. For all her evil deeds, the writer decides to give the movie a heart and let her survive. What was he thinking? No one wants her to live, and by that matter we don't want Elwes to live either. He may have given a little depth to the flat character, but his character was asking to be stalked and killed.

Watching this movie, I was reminded of three different movies about evil children. Two were really good, and one was mildly entertaining. The two that were really good were The Bad Seed and Village of the Damned (John Carpenter's version; not the 1960 one). These depicted evil children hurting, even killing, people that make them mad or get in their way. The Bad Seed was the best one and starred an actress who deserved an Academy Award ®. Village of the Damned was made in 1960, and then remade in 1995. The newer version was somehow better than the old one. Maybe because the visual style and color of the new one made it better. Plus, it showed more things that I wanted to see. The third movie is The Good Son. Sure, it was entertaining and Elijah Wood was great, but what were they thinking when they cast Macaulay Culkin as the "good son?" It was bad judgement, but everything else was okay.

Now, I wonder why this film didn't work for me. Silverstone was good, Elwes did what he could with the character, and the violence was frightening. I still don't know why it didn't work, but whatever the reason, this is probably one of the worst versions of the "psycho-kid" theme. Don't watch this movie unless you want a bad taste left in your mouth and a feeling of depression because you just wasted 2 hours of your time.

The Crush is rated R. Why they didn't cut out some of the sick things is beyond me. There is violence (mostly off screen) including a scene with wasps that makes you cringe. The language was too harsh for this movie. There is even some nudity that didn't have to be shown, but did because the filmmakers thought it might draw in some more viewers. It probably won't and this movie will flop.