MOVIE REVIEW `Whatever' By AMY DAWES The Hollywood Reporter
One can only imagine that something was lost in the translation when first-time filmmaker Susan Skoog turned her vision for ``Whatever'' into a movie. Meant as an unvarnished look at what it's like to be a teenage girl growing up in America, it's gritty and depressing without being illuminating or the least bit memorable. Set in a style-less, nowheresville burg in blue-collar New Jersey, the film gets its only real energy from a loud and liberally used soundtrack with 1980s gems by the Ramones, David Bowie, Patti Smith and others. That and the title - which is more clever and contemporary than the movie - are likely to be the sole selling points when this low-budget indie makes its brief appearance in movie theaters. ``Whatever'' is one of those movies that bungles the first few scenes and only rarely redeems itself during the rest of its running time. Two girls in their final year of high school spend a lot of time together but seem to have nothing in common except downbeat prospects and plenty of attitude. Brenda (Chad Morgan) is bound for big-time trouble as a nymphomaniac who spends all her free time in search of fast company and more sex; Anna (Liza Weil) is her dazed, passive pal who's meant to be more sensitive and creative, based on her androgynous clothing and her application to art school in Manhattan. But if art is at all exciting and inspiring to her, it doesn't come across; she merely falls for losers who babble about painting and passion, while her friend falls for losers who babble about motorcycles and drugs. Social life consists of teenagers in divey houses getting blasted on drugs and booze, all of which is graphically depicted. But while Richard Linklater captured these rites of small-town passage with wit and enjoyment in ``Dazed and Confused,'' Skoog directs with a much heavier hand and a sense of desperation and doom. There's no denying that this can be ``what it's like,'' especially for young people as directionless and contemptuous of adults as these. But Anna, the central character, is too adrift to provide much hope for escape; what little redemption the movieoffers comes as too little, too late.
(np: Best Of Bowie 74/79)
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