Back in the heyday of drive-ins, "Disturbing Behavior" would have made a great second feature behind something like "Massacre at Central High" or "Rock N Roll High School." Or even "The Stepford Wives," which this often droll little chiller frequently recalls. Put together by some of the production team responsible for "The X Files," "Behavior" frequently captures the same weird/wacky atmosphere found in some of that series' more lighthearted episodes.
Scott Rosenberg's screenplay mixes together equal parts of "Stepford" and the 1987 cult classic "The Lost Boys" into a surprisingly amusing little chiller full of quirky dialogue and slightly warped stereotypes, such as its hero Steve (James Marsden), a troubled teen whose well-meaning parents transplant the family to Cradle Bay, a hamlet that initially seems to live up to its snoozy-sounding name.
But before long, Cradle Bay begins to look as if it has something in common with Twin Peaks. Steve is introduced to the members of the Blue Ribbon Club, a bunch of squeaky-clean jocks and preps whose brilliant sugar-frosted smiles can't quite camouflage the odd twinkle in their eyes. Uneasy with the in-crowd, Steve hooks up with stoner Gavin (Nick Stahl) and his friend Rachel (Katie Holmes, in a marked about-face from her docile "Dawson's Creek" character), a slacker dream-girl in black leather and charcoal eyeliner. While Gavin and Rachel try to hustle beers in a supermarket parking lot, the Blue Ribbon set is holding court at the local yogurt shop and grooving to Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow." Indeed, the Ribbons are a mellow bunch -- until those pesky adolescent hormones begin to bubble and cause them to get physical in a way Olivia never would have imagined.
Though the storyline is a bit herky-jerky (perhaps the result of extensive last-minute editing; the DVD version offers numerous excised scenes and an alternate ending), director David Nutter's film is carried along by its agreeably twisted sense of humor. For example, when a troubled kid is sentenced to be lobotomized and a nurse voices her objections to the procedure, a doctor steps forward to assure her it's the only sure-fire way "to cut the bruises of the banana," and when one of the Ribbons goes berserk in public, Rachel writes it off as "toxic jock syndrome." The movie is underscored by a well-chosen soundtrack of gloomy alt-rock anthems, including Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta" ("paranoia, paranoia, everybody's comin' to me") and the Flys' splendid "Got You Where I Want You." Rosenberg even caps the story with a sly and all-too-appropriate nod to Pink Floyd's "The Wall."
What a laugh.
What a scream. James Sanford
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