SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS (1998)
Rating: 2.0 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Tamara Jenkins
Written by: Tamara Jenkins
Ingredients: Precocious teenage girl during the summer before high school, family
Starring: Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei
Synopsis: In this coming of age story a precocious girl named Viv (Natasha Lyonne) lives with well-meaning family members such as a marijuana-smoking brother and a ditzy female cousin (Marisa Tomei ) who has run away from her rich home. The summer before high school, Viv discovers her breasts have grown large. Before high school starts, she must learn how to use menstrual pads and a vibrator, lose her virginity, and deal with her breasts and family.
Opinion: I applaud the efforts of writer/director Tamara Jenkins, who manages to provide eccentric, sympathetic characters and writes quite well. At the same time, I think the subject matter is problematic because of limited appeal. There's probably not a very wide audience that finds summer movie entertainment in pre-high school menstrual pads and vibrators.
Reviewed August 30, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga This review and others like it can be found at THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews