DISTURBING BEHAVIOR
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. MGM Director: David Nutter Writer: Scott Rosenberg Cast: James Marsden, Nick Stahl, Katie Holmes, Bruce Greenwood, William Sadler
The men of Stepford, Connecticut (remember?) are delighted with their new, subservient wives in Bryan Forbes's dynamite sci-fi picture, "The Stepford Wives." What's more the wives themselves are ccstatic. That sounded like a win-win situation until Ross and Prentiss deciphered a dastardly conspiracy. .
When 43-year-old Peggy Sue goes back to her high-school class in Francis Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married," she is disgusted that her classmates are such goody-goodies that they would not even accept a note she tries to pass to them.
What's so bad about being nice, even perfect? Director David Nutter explains in "Disturbing Behavior," a sci-fi film which, like "Stepford" and "Peggy Sue" sends up conformity and suburban bliss and champions individualism and, by implication, urban living.
While "Disturbing Behavior" is demographically directed to a high-school and college market, the parents of teenagers are the ones who should see it. So should doctors who prescribe Ritalin and even Prozac for kids who are diagnosed as depressives but who really cannot--and perhaps should not--fit in with others who are intolerant of those who are not already members of their clique or, in the case of this picture, their cult.
To make his point about the harmful effects of mindless conformity, first-time feature film director David Nutter-- previously known for TV episodes like "The Commish," "Booker," "21 Jump Street" and "ER"-- promotes a witty, sharp-talking student named Gavin (Nick Stahl), a kid who does not fit into any group in school and stands outside all as a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the social structure of the institution situated in the small town of Cradle Bay. Honing in on the new kid in town who also appears unwilling to make new friends, he deconstructs the lunchroom by pointing out the social design in the movie's keenest speech. He points to the "motorheads" on one side of the room whose drug of choice is beer; the nerds, who turn on to Apple PCs and whose drug of choice is Saturday night Jasmine tea;the skaters who imbibe ecstasy; and the elite Blue Ribbons, a clean-living lot whose excitement comes from donating car wash services and arranging cake sales. Now these Blue Ribbons appear the ideal teens except for a couple of difficulties: they cannot tolerate, much less socialize with, those who are beneath them (in one scene one of their number kicks over the janitor's pail and calls the custodian a retard); and when certain forbidden, all-too-human desires (read: lust) struggle to rise to the surface, they go ballistic. One guy gives in to his passion and kills the girl who excites him. Nor are the young women exempt: one such lovely in the throes of lust bangs her head against the mirror and bloodies herself up real good.
Like the characters in Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinocerus," all but one of whom eventually turns into a beast, a single lad in this picture struggles to keep his individuality. Steve (James Marsden), whose parents unwisely moved him and his sister out of Chicago into the sticks of Cradle Bay after the suicide death of their brother, is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the adaptive youth. Together with another rebel Rachel (Katie Holmes), he discovers the conspiracy to tame rebellious kids and suppress their natural, adolescent aches. Scripter Scott Rosenberg is no Ionesco, however.
Some of the scenes are gripping, particularly those involving chases and a visit to an institution for psychotic children who apparently failed to turn into Blue Ribbons. The film, however, takes quite a bit of time to get to the core of the town's condition, instead hitting us with a series of choppy vignettes that are simply confusing. One scene involving surgical implants is remarkably uninvolving and, given the factor that this sort of business has been done quite a bit before, "Disturbing Behavior" fails to do an original take on the theme of compulsive compliance with group norms. Perhaps, though, its young audience will not have been through the mill with stories of this nature, especially if they never got to pore over what was once required reading, "Catcher in the Rye." For such an audience, there are valuable lessons, and there are guides as well for the moms and dads. If you're a kid and your folks say time and again "We want only what's best for you," watch out: they may really mean that they want what's best for them.
Rated R. Running time: 91 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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