JAWBREAKER (1999)
Rating: 0.0/10 Stars a bunch of people who should fire their agents Directed by committee, apparently
There's a scene early on in "Jawbreaker" where a character utters the unintentionally prophetic line, "That is *so* not funny". How right she was. This pathetic tale of three high-schoolers who accidentally kill their best friend in a birthday kidnapping prank gone horribly awry is never even remotely funny. Or fun.
Or original. Not content with the too-obvious "Heathers" heisting, the filmmakers proceed to lift freely from a staggering variety of sources, including "Carrie", "Bride of Frankenstein", "Blue Velvet", and even Shaw's Pygmalion, itself recently remade as "She's All That". "Jawbreaker" is a pastiche, and not even an enjoyable one. I find it extremely telling that the most engaging part of the film is the credit sequence, a jawbreaker factory montage inexplicably backed by Veruca Salt's "Volcano Girls"; serving as a blueprint for the rest of the film, the song has absolutely nothing to do with the footage we're watching. Just close your eyes and pretend you're listening to an alt-rock station; you won't be missing anything.
The blame for a mess this big has to be spread around among the principals. Rebecca Gayheart, following roles in "Scream 2" and "Urban Legend", should have known better than to take yet another role in yet another teen body count movie. Pam Grier has totally wasted any credibility she might have gotten from her role in Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown". And Rose McGowan should just quit acting. She has no charisma, no presence, and no acting skills other than rolling her eyes and looking disaffected. McGowan manages to be upstaged by her real-life boyfriend, rocker Marilyn Manson, whose fifteen second role here is far more interesting than anything any of the "real" actors are doing. Manson, sans trademark makeup & contact lenses, and with an obviously fake moustache, looks eerily like Nicholas Cage; who woulda thunk it?
That crack about direction by committee wasn't merely a pithy sound-bite. Stylistically, thematically & narratively, "Jawbreaker" is all over the map, varying wildly in tone & content from scene to scene. Though credited solely to writer/director Darren Stein, one gets the feeling that no two scenes here were actually guided by the same hands. If Stein was indeed responsible for the whole of this atrocity, someone needs to get the man some drugs, pronto. Prozac, lithium, kava, ritalin, something, anything. He's quite obviously in desperate need of chemical help.
"Jawbreaker" is a monumental waste of effort and resources, and quite likely one of the single worst films I've ever seen. To call "Jawbreaker" garbage would be to insult garbage. Bad flicks for the rest of the year are safe; I've already got my pick for worst film of '99.
"Jawbreaker" runs approximately 90 minutes, though it feels longer than "Titanic", and is rated R for language, sexual situations and graphic violence. Not recommended for kids, teens, or anyone else.
Tom
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