THE CRUSH (1993) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Writer/Director: Alan Shapiro Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Cary Elwes, Jennifer Rubin, Kurtwood Smith, Gwynyth Walsh
It's kind of sad to see that superstar Alicia Silverstone has made only one film that's good ("Clueless," by the way). The rest of her career consists of some big budget flops ("Excess Baggage" comes to mind), and these: cheapie thrillers. "The Crush" is, sadly, the best of them. I'm not saying it's good. This film stinks worse than a big fat pile of dated limburgher.
Alicia plays the precocious 14-year old daughter of two rich people (Kurtwood Smith and Gwynyth Walsh), who run some nice housing complex. Into her life, one day, comes the dashing Cary Elwes (there's an oxymoron) sans his fake English accent (which makes him dashing). He's a writer who needs a little place to write. Soon, he's being spied on by little Alicia, who begins to follow him around and stuff, seeming just like the typical teenage crush on the older man (but why Cary?).
After a little kiss he gives her (we have no clue why, though she does look fantastic at the time), she becomes full-fledged obsessed with him like a teenage Hinckley Jr. She begins calling him, pulling down her bathing suit in front of him, and even begins stalking his new love interest from work (Jennifer Rubin). By the time she's stripping in front of him (a body double - I know, I was sad too), we know exactly where this film will go, and just want to get off the little ride.
Soon, not only is she trying to kill people around him, and annoy the hell out of him, but she comes up with the ingenius idea of the typical obsessive film character: she'll try to kill him. Yeah, that will solve all her problems. So the man she loves is dead, AND she's in jail. And this girl's supposed to be a genius. Guess she just tests well.
"The Crush" gets more annoying as it goes on, and succumbs to every single cliche (writing grafiiti on his car, spying on he and his chick having sex, breaking into his house, etc, etc, etc, bore, bore, bore). There's nothing to really reccomend from this, unless you're trying to watch the entire filmmography of Kurtwood Smith or something.
Alicia's not even worth seeing. She won all these awards at the MTV Movie Awards, and yeah, she looks fantastic, even for a 14-year old, but she's just not that good. Then again, the script is horrible, giving her no depth or interesting character points. I'll give Alicia this: she tries her best to give a creepy performance, and become attractive, but it really never takes off. Luckily, she was great in a similar role in the "Cryin'" video. But yeah, she occasionally gives off some glimpses of good acting. If there was a reason to see this, it would be for her nude scene, but it's not even her real ass. Alicia has a little problem with doing screen nudity. Oh, but she doesn't have something against doing crap films?!
In short, "The Crush" is just a crap film that shows that these little cheapie thrillers suck, even if they star a future star (not Elwes).
MY RATING (out of 5): *
Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/
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