WHATEVER (Sony Pictures Classics) Directed by Susan Skoog "I hope the film I made tells the truth about what it is to be a seventeen-year-old girl, what it's like to lose your virginity to the wrong guy, to experiment with drugs, to lose your best friend, to forgive your mother ... The excitement and wonder of adolescence goes hand-in-hand with the anxiety and disappointments," notes writer-director Susan Skoog in the production notes for her film "Whatever." Admirable goals, to be sure, and "Whatever" reverberates with earnestness. "Excitement" and "wonder," well, that's another story. Set in a colorless New Jersey neighborhood in the spring of 1981 "Whatever" centers on Anna (Liza Weil), an aspiring painter who's prematurely jaded, perhaps because of living with her worn-down mom (Kathryn Rossiter) who offers advice along the lines of "don't expect so much; it makes things easier" in between dates with married men. Though she smokes, drinks and drugs with the best of them, Anna hasn't yet discovered sex, much to the consternation of her best friend Brenda (Chad Morgan), a regular Pass-Around Patty whose evenings often end with her searching for her underwear. The movie's Reagan Era setting works against it, summoning up comparisons to many similar, superior teen movies that came out of the early 1980s: Anna's loveless sexual initiation calls up memories of Jennifer Jason Leigh in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"; her desire to transcend her blue-collar upbringing through sheer talent is reminiscent of "Flashdance"; her feelings of shame toward her loser family seem to have drifted in from "Pretty In Pink." The presence of Frederic Forrest as a hip art teacher serves to remind us he once co-starred with Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman in the 1983 sleeper "Valley Girl." While Skoog loads the soundtrack with such can't-miss classics as the Pretenders' "Mystery Achievement," Patti Smith Group's "Dancing Barefoot" and Blondie's "The Hardest Part," too much of her sluggish screenplay brings to mind another Blondie song, "Will Anything Happen?". When "Whatever" eventually does get rolling, it heads straight down the highway to Clicheville, as trampy Brenda teases her way into danger and Anna's heart and spirit are almost shattered by the cruel whips of fate. If "Whatever" connects on any level at all, it's because of Weil, whose knowing eyes and sad smile give Anna a haunting quality. Most of the other performances are one-note, although it's hard to determine if that's the fault of the actors or Skoog's graceless directorial style, which makes too much of this teen-angst tale feel like a 1981 "Afterschool Special" rather than the bittersweet slice-of-life it so badly wants to be. James Sanford
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