The Innocents

"The Innocents" (1961) probably holds up better than most old horror movies. The frightening elements are psychosexual, but in a subtle, layered way--and it's subtle not just because the movie is old. If the undertones were any stronger--even if the film were made today--it would've become instant camp. (This isn't to say that a campy version wouldn't be entertaining.)

"The Innocents" is based on Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw" (1898), which I started reading awhile back, but I was so bored with the prologue that I gave up--a mistake, perhaps, that I should rectify. (The change in name does more than make the title sleeker.) Deborah Kerr plays the young-and-pretty preacher's daughter, Miss Giddens, who goes off to an English manor and becomes the governess for a pair of orphans whose uncle willfully neglects them. She begins to see visions of the children's deceased former governess and the estate's deceased valet who, according to the good-hearted maid (Megs Jenkins), were lewd, flawed people. The former governess was obsessively, masochistically in love with the n'er-do-well valet, a cruel, abusive man who had a Rasputin-like appeal and influence. The maid is ashamed to tell Miss Giddens of their proclivity to make love when and wherever they wanted--even if the innocent children were watching. In a scene that the director, Jack Clayton, cleverly withholds from us, Miss Giddens somehow learns from her predecessor that the old governess and valet can only be together (sexually) if they possess the children; the lecherous elders were, of course, the isolated kids' idols, and Flora and Miles seem to have taken on some of the lovers' characteristics (Miles, for instance, flirts with Miss Giddens and kisses her lips good night). Giddens, who exhibits no sexual urges of her own, wishes to protect the children and believes that if the truth can be wrung out of them they'll be saved. The children claim to not see the ghosts when Miss Giddens does, and the maid is content to not wake the children from this bad dream; she doesn't see the specters either, and is skeptical of Miss Giddens, but minds the governess's authority. It's never resolved whether ghosts are present and Giddens's truth-bating does not go as planned.

The Victorian writing and setting, and the early-’60s production enrich and confound the sexual analogies. The children are referred to as "the innocents," but, if Miss Giddens is correct, they've been unwittingly corrupted. But is our virtuous, virginal heroine correct? Is the maid right in trying not to disturb the children’s' idyll, and what would it mean if she did? Since we're not clear on whether their excessively childlike behavior is really "innocent" or, in actuality, corrupted, we're not sure whether Miss Giddens' virtue is devoted to postponing their sexual awakening or whether or not that is a good or bad thing. If Giddens is right, then their sexuality is improper (both by Victorian and modern standards): possessed, the kids are made to be incestuous. However, they show no tangible signs of being truly harmed, and, as with many horror movies, we're forced to doubt the supernatural as much as we are made to believe in it. Although the movie never truly "frightened" me, I think its leaving me with these questions was enough to make it a chilling, intellectual and satisfactory experience.

The direction is simple and fluid and even Clayton's montages hardly seem dated (although sometimes the tendentious score does). Freddie Francis's vivid grayscale photography doesn't hurt (although the framing itself is hurt when not presented in its proper aspect ratio) and neither does the traditionally Victorian production design. Also, I'm sure that the film owes a lot to Truman Capote, who co-wrote the movie with John Mortimer and William Archibald in the midst of writing "In Cold Blood"--his spaciousness and journalistic formality in that book fit snugly here.

"The Innocents" in mood and manner has left its mark on more recent psychological-horror movies like "The Shining" and "The Others." If those movies appeal to you, then don't let this one's age be an impediment to your seeing it.

Sid and Nancy

Sid (Gary Oldman) and Nancy (Chloe Webb) are well-played, considering how little the movie reveals about them. The heroin-addled vicissitudes of the Sex Pistols' bassist and his beloved floozy seem to stretch on forever, though, historically, the setting isn't longer than two years; and, although the movie mostly improves as it goes on, its heroes never become much more than deviant morons fueled by (particularly on Nancy's part) self-indulgence. Their love for one another, though passionate, seems arbitrary. This is probably because the director, Alex Cox, doesn't give us any context--we're given next to nothing about the characters' histories or the punk movement that they were a part of. "Sid and Nancy," which has been denounced by Johnny Rotten, is carried by its angry, laudatory verve, but not much else.

Superbad

The comedy in Superbad works, I think, because of the absurd innocence behind the characters’ attempt to lose theirs. From the Animal House perspective—which generated a large degree of commercial, youth-oriented schlock in its wake—the kids are cynical narcissists living for the trashed weekend hook-up. In Mean Girls, the kids are the slick products of a sophisticated farce—honestly depicted, but detached from reality. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, however, who wrote the first draft of Superbad while they were adolescents themselves, are far from detached; they are only so far beyond high school age—and have made much of themselves in the meantime. Thus, they portray the banal, rockin’-the-suburbs rites of passage with very balanced nostalgia.

The last-party-of-high school, trying-to-buy-liquor-underage, gotta-get-the-girl coming-of-age superstructure of Superbad is nothing new. And, technically, neither are Seth (Jonah Hill) or Evan (Michael Cera); the corpulent bore and his lanky sidekick predate the teen movie by a long shot. Even the much-lauded deluge of “dirty words” is just Porky’s: The Next Generation. Don’t other critics get that censorship (and teenagers’ vocabularies, upon seeing these movies) is continually getting laxer? (Using swear words isn’t really boldness on the filmmakers’ part.) What works is not the all-too-universal plot line, but the lovingly absurd point of view, which consumes it. With the penis drawings and, in a lazier way, the dialogue, Goldberg and Rogen are livening up the usual circumstances; it becomes a farce, all right, but one that teenagers would want to write about themselves. The writers (Rogen was 25 when Superbad came out) aren’t reliving their high school past; they’re rewriting it as they wish it had been—but, fortunately, they’re not narcissists.

Why else would Rogen (also executive producer) cast himself as one of the cops that picks up Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and takes him for a joyride to prove that grown-ups can have fun, too? (He’s not trying to convince just Fogell of that.) Teen movies often feed into teenage self-absorption and pretend that the adult world is like some weird, parallel dimension beyond the viewer’s scope (or interest). When adults are actually given dialogue, it might as well be the wonk-wonk-wonk of the Peanuts’ parents. Mom and Dad don’t make an appearance in Superbad, either, but the sequences with those strange creatures beyond the drinking age are generally the best. Quasi-virginal Seth acts as a shrewd pragmatist, blackmailing a shady addict into drawing them to a lurid house party. David Edelstein of New York compared the scene where Evan is made to sing for a group of cokeheads in a bedroom to Dean Stockwell’s orgasmic ditty in Blue Velvet, but I think Edelstein got it in reverse. As in the David Lynch film, the kids aren’t the surreal spectacle, the postlapsarian grown-ups are. It’s a strange world these twenty- and thirty-somethings are mired in, but the great irony is that this is just what the party Seth and Evan would be relegated to in a few years time—high school is indeed a “magical” age.

The unscrupulous cops—Animal House brothers that, much to their chagrin, graduated—are even queasier role models. Their target-practice, drunk-driving tomfoolery would be a nightmare in Training Day; it’s a testament to these filmmakers that it comes off comically in Superbad. The teen-triumvirate wants to get out of high school “accomplished”; the policemen want back in. The cops’ sentimentality keeps them from being immoral buffoons, but the level of sentiment is just right: they don’t want to get back into the pool so much as they just want to dip their feet in. Otherwise, the fantasy would become acridly anti-adult, and the cops’ woebegone misanthropy would be a stone-cold bummer.

I’d be remiss not to mention the actors, though they’ve been greatly publicized elsewhere. Cera’s Evan is not naïve: he’s sweetly, shyly moral. He’s in opposition to the brutal masculine figure who’d come back into style with the Burger King commercials of a few years back; in fact, his femininity is made into a joke—but not a cruel one. Cera blends goodwill with good timing, and exudes a cowboy’s laconic chivalry and conscientiousness without the kind of ego that fosters pretensions of superiority. When he says, matter-of-factly, that he wants to respect women, you believe him. Hill, on the other hand... I can identify with the bullies who want to beat this violently undersexed loudmouth up. But his seeming authenticity in this role is also his strength. It’s almost impossible (and undesirable) to play this role without irony; he doesn’t, but neither does he wink at the camera. Mintz-Plasse is such an authentic dork (being as he was, an actual high school student at the time) that saying anything more about him would be superfluous. (Except maybe, Why does everyone think his McLovin license is such comedic gold? It just passed over me, I guess.)

I’m sure that Superbad will soon join the pantheon of generational teen movies, somewhere between Empire Records and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and up there it deserves a place. I’m certain, too, that this is exactly the kind of movie that will become iconic of this generation and decade (even though its 70s-chic will seem confusing), and will gloss over, to some, all the bad memories of high school. One shouldn’t forget, however, that it has the failings of all its antecedents, as well: the two-dimensional, all-their-shit-together mythical girls, for instance. But, it’s a small, winsome movie (even a nicely lighted one, for what it’s worth) that gears one up for illicit summertime partying.

Atonement

Atonement is so pleasingly old-fashioned that one might believe, save for a few details, that it was up for Best Picture of 1946. One can safely assume that the filmmakers were aiming for the kind of “greatness” that romances of this stripe have attained in the past; in those terms, Atonement has achieved it. Its psychology is no more advanced than that of a Gone with the Wind or Doctor Zhivago or Titanic, but it’s a grand tear-jerker—a high-class chick-flick.

The early scenes, at a stately English manor, are presented as though Gosford Park was decades away. There’s the pristinely-beautiful starlet-lover, Cecelia (Keira Knightley); her Victorian dowager mother; her unappealing, rich fiancé; his foppish, absurdly élitist industrialist-friend; the starlet’s true love, Robbie (James McAvoy), a gentle soul of lesser means who is about to enroll in medical school and prove his worth as a credit to his class; and the starlet’s little sister, Briony (the airy blonde Saoirse Ronan), whose name smells of salt and who pines for Robbie, but is too young and awkward to nab him. All in the span of a day, Robbie accidentally sends Cecelia a letter expounding on his longing for her “cunt,” which Briony reads and is disgusted by. Briony catches Robbie and Cecelia finally consummating their love in the library; later, when Briony sees a man (who we do not see) raping her pre-teen cousin in the woods, she blames the crime on Robbie. He’s sent to prison, and, at the break of World War II, opts to become a soldier instead.

Like Wind or Zhivago or Titanic, the calamity here is but a means of separating our two star-crossed lovers. And, as with those three films, the historical disaster (the Civil War, Russian Revolution and sinking ship, respectively) is reproduced like a technician’s dream: one impressive dolly shot swivels around a war-torn city for minutes. But, even when the camera pulls back to reveal slaughtered schoolgirls stumbled upon by Robbie (meant to evoke, I’m certain, the famous crane shot revealing all the wounded Confederates in Wind), one doesn’t feel too much anti-war fury: Robbie’s perambulations as a soldier never show him any combat, only monumental weariness and the heart-squishing yearning for Cecelia.

Despite its gaudiness, though, the movie is not without feeling; there’s a very sensitive scene at a war hospital in which Briony (now a nurse) speaks to a dying French soldier. He’s missing pieces of his brain, and believes he knows and loves her. A counterpoint to this scene, however, is the incredibly graphic display of battle wounds after a battalion is rushed to the hospital. Like the schoolgirls, this doesn’t show us the horrors of war; it shows us how nasty a makeup job these filmmakers can provide. Why they thought this effect desirable in this movie, I don’t know.

The real innovation of Atonement, I suppose, is that the foci of the romance are not just Cecelia and her Robbie, but Briony the Bitch, as well. The title comes from her lifelong attempts at penance for slandering Robbie—a crime of passion. Guilt and the sultry are prime subjects for a romance novel, and they translate cleanly into this epic spectacle because the writers and the director, Joe Wright (a name not quite as epical as Cecil B. DeMille’s), seem earnest about featuring the pathos, but balance that earnestness with an ability to keep thrusting the plot (through sometimes-confusing flashbacks and forwards) in the same way that Robbie wishes to thrust Cecelia. Unfortunately, as they are such darling sweethearts, that thrust sometimes includes mantras like “Come back to me!” and “This story will resume!” But the cinematography (by Seamus McGarvey) is so classically grandiose that one feels that it’s natural for Pvt. Robbie to run after Cecelia’s truck as it drives away. And McAvoy and Romola Garai (the older Briony, and a good double for Ronan) give their roles an elegant, utterly British intensity. One moment, however, is irreparably campy—a purplish attempt at foreshadowing: through a window, Briony sees an old woman waddle down the street with a cart during an important scene, and the viewer laughs his way right out of the film.

Here’s a question: Why are war romances (not combat movies such as Platoon and Saving Private Ryan) so popular at such queasy times? The Civil War somehow provided pleasurable escape for those about to face World War II, and now, as we are entrenched in Iraq and the War on Terror and cynicism, this throwback goes up for Best Picture. It’s not a question one can satisfactorily answer in a small space; but maybe by making our previous conflicts seem grotesque in a glamorous, fantastical way, and, further, turning them into passionate duologues between two lovely lovers, we feel less troubled by the problems at hand—they devolve to the interpersonal level. Regardless, soggy—sometimes even sloppy and hole-ridden—material like this can make for a compleat guilty pleasure, if not a “great” movie.

Michael Clayton

"Michael Clayton" is a direct descendant of the corruption-themed thrillers of the seventies (such as "Serpico" and "Chinatown"), but it loses nothing in dropping the characteristic downer ending. With the possible exception of "Atonement," which I've still yet to see, "Clayton" is the least arty of the Best Picture nominees (in terms of style--not necessarily substance), but it's terse, slick, exciting and one hell of a polemical. Films like this sometimes go slack and take a pedantic piddle, but this one's tight, bouncy and smart. Tony Gilroy, the writer and director (this is his first go at the latter), has a knack for giving potentially-shopworn sentiments an entertaining kick (such as taking the profusion of anti-lawyer bigotries and turning them into "The Devil's Advocate"). He doesn't disappoint here; he draws out his characters and gives them so much to do in so little time (the movie spans less than a week) that the proficient actors in those parts can't but sparkle--it may be from exhaustion. It certainly looks that way with George Clooney (Clayton), the tired fixer who finally wants out (an old standard, but one that's frenetically enlivened here); he was at one time kindred to the broad hero of "Thank You for Smoking," but has finally crashed to planet earth. His situation is so bad it would be "Kafka-esque" if he had a spare moment to think it through. The only really substantial problem with this movie is that it has too many characters in too many places--some look like others and, though there's a tight Hollywood wrap-up, one's not entirely sure of everybody's affiliation at the end--but that's like saying the movie is too interesting. It doesn't give you the aesthetic thrill ride that "There Will Be Blood" does, but "Clayton" stays blissfully above the speed limit.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a wild ride, but in the end, an unsubstantial one. The movie becomes slack when Raoul Duke/Hunter Thompson (Johnny Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) go to Vegas for a second round; only bits and pieces match the zingy high of the first half, such as Thompson whipping his battered white Cadillac onto an airport runway, an ether walk (that Gilliam seems to have borrowed from his Monty Python days) and Thompson literally running into himself in San Francisco, 1965. The movie abandons the surreal social satire of the early scenes—the “electric snake” comes chiefly to mind—for not-so-subtle jabs at a square narc officer convention and muddled hoopla about the failure of the sixties and the American dream. This may be effective in the book, but in the movie the sixties spirit seems to have been squashed by meandering drug bingers like Gonzo and, to a lesser degree, Thompson. The fail-safe is that the movie is such a ripped quagmire that it seems to mean something, anyway—particularly if when you view the film, you’re going by its characters’ examples.

Regardless, the initial wackiness is as great as Brazil or 12 Monkeys and maybe even a little bit more disorienting; you literally stumble out of your seat when the movie’s done. And the actors are as willfully cartoonish as the direction. The movie’s decline is not ruinous; it’s merely a comparative letdown.

Thank You for Smoking

"Thank You for Smoking" leaves the kind of bitter taste in your mouth that cigarettes do. In its conception of the world everyone's either a sap or a douche bag. It's libertarianism taken to an extreme--a moral vacuum wherein nobody's to be trusted. Its depiction of lobbyists as insidious, amoral spinners is warranted--making them agents of big tobacco, to boot, is almost a cheap shot. And so is turning their opponent, a well-meaning Vermont senator (William H. Macy), into an impotent prig--by the film's end, he wants to digitally remove cigarettes from old movies and replace them with coffee mugs and candy canes. I suppose that counts as satire, but come on... It's more of a jab at Spielberg's flashlights-for-guns swap in his re-release of "E.T." than the liberal politicians whose views the filmmakers (and novelist Christopher Buckley)--ironically--see as arrogant. That today's general public would buy the B.S. that the spin doctor sells about cigarettes' "positive attributes" is something that I can't buy; the movie, however, takes it for granted that they would and do. Even though the film is clever and lively, it's also farfetched, manipulative and--politics aside--too damn smug. When I agreed with some of the points it made, it made me feel kind of like a douche bag, too.

I Am Legend

The Richard Matheson novel "I Am Legend" has been filmed twice before: with Vincent Price (at the height of his Roger Corman affiliation) and Charlton Heston (mid-way between "Planet of the Apes" and "Soylent Green") in the Will Smith role. It's hard to beat that pedigree. I wanted to see the new version in hopes that it would fulfill the camp quota that the earlier flicks must; to my surprise, the 2007 film is hardly campy at all--it's good in a good way.

One wouldn't think that such results would come from a movie directed by the maker of "Constantine" and pop music videos, Francis Lawrence, and Akiva Goldsman, the screenwriter of recent Ron Howard pictures. But, combined with the talents of a venerable sci-fi writer, the filmmakers balance schlock and safety so perfectly that those specters are hardly evident. What the film does have is a successful conflation of diverse sources: "Cast Away," zombie movies and "Children of Men."

The "Cast Away" element comes from it being a largely one-man show. It's Will Smith as the last man in post-Apocalyptic Manhattan, a virologist named Neville who spends his days fortifying himself against and trying to cure a wolf pack of subhuman zombies--victims of a pandemic caused by a cancer vaccine gone awry. His encounters with the "night-seekers," who--of course--are allergic to the sun, are wonderfully suspenseful. But they're all the better because you're so attached to Neville that the thought of losing him is terrifying. This, of course, would not be possible if Will Smith didn't give such a strong, endearing performance. He needs to hold up the movie and he does. To make his job easier, the story employs the old trick of giving him a loyal pooch, Sam. She's a relic of Neville's lost family (whose demise is revealed in flashbacks) and she's the only thing he has to hold on to, the only reason he has to not break down and reveal his utter desperation and underlying pessimism.

His character and our empathy for him drive the movie and Lawrence, surprisingly (but correctly), takes this for granted. The CG rendering of abandoned New York is remarkable, but, after the beginning, it's hardly dwelled on. We become unerringly accustomed to it like Neville has. In fact, the film opens with him hunting deer through Times Square--which is probably a wee bit too forested (it's only 2012, after all)--but the perversity of the situation is apparent. As much as Neville likes to pretend it's not, we learn more and more that the world we know is gone--and it's chilling. The acute isolation--and its effect on the psyche--is more "Twilight Zone" than horror movie. (Unsurprisingly, Matheson wrote several episodes of that show.)

Eventually, a few other stragglers--a Brazilian nun, Anna (Alice Braga), and a tight-lipped boy (Charlie Tahan)--show up and a horde of surprisingly resilient zombies break through Neville's defenses. It's a good, if perfunctory, action-film climax, but the traditional cat-and-mouse fun is mixed with a deep-seated fear for the heroes. When they get cornered, there really is no place else for them to go. The movie then makes a noble decision--an affirmation that Neville's work has been worthwhile. It's due to a last-minute contrivance, but it's a fair trade-off for the development of Neville's spiritual dilemma and his interplay with Anna.

"I Am Legend" is not without contrivances, genre conventions and storytelling deficiencies (it implies that the devolved zombies are evolving, but never follows up); however, overall, it's a remarkable piece of craftsmanship. Lawrence doesn't cheat you on any of the important elements of a science fiction-thriller: action, suspense, a thought-provoking sci-fi premise--and a compelling human element, to boot. It's not as inspired a movie as "Children of Men"--it's slicker--but it's an absorbing, effective piece of entertainment.

Juno

Only one week into 2008 and "Juno" is up for several awards, among them a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Screenplay. The only award it deserves is one that doesn't exist: Phoniest Movie of 2007. The script, by Diablo Cody, is almost as horrendous as its writer's pen name: none of its characters are remotely believable; they're just quirkiness personified. It's an unholy marriage of the worst of indie-film snarkiness, "Family Guy"-paced reference slinging and treacle.

The first act seems to be a solipsism centered around sixteen-year-old Juno MacGruff (Ellen Page, whose character's very name is quirky nonsense); she gets knocked up by Paul (Michael Cera) and decides to give her baby up to an older couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). When she meets the surrogate parents, she's a fount of bizarre, insensitive comments, mostly aimed at Garner's consummate yuppie, but they might as well have been directed at Margaret Dumont from an old Marx Brothers movie (although the lines would have been far wittier in that); miraculously, Garner doesn't hear or react to a word of Juno's "zany" antics. Even worse, Bateman is an erstwhile grunge rocker, which gives Juno an opportunity to list all of the cool music she listens to such as Patti Smith and The Stooges. It's nothing but the filmmakers dropping names in order to pick up some free hipster credibility; the whole movie is artificially cool, but truly, deeply square.

(The music that's actually in the movie is folky and somnolent. It reminds me of something Roger Ebert mentioned in his thirtieth anniversary review of "The Graduate": the Simon and Garfunkle soundtrack in that film is "safe"--better suited, therefore, for lackadaisical Benjamin than femme infidel Mrs. Robinson.)

Ironically, the square, "poignant" moments were probably those I liked best, but even the most authentic scene was screwed up by the director, Jason Reitman. Garner is touching Juno's baby-swollen gut and talking to her future child, but the scene is set in the middle of a shopping mall. You'd think someone would think it strange to see a thirty-five-year-old woman groping a pregnant sixteen-year-old's stomach.

And Juno, the "offbeat" teenager who loves hard music, is as saintly square as the teens on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel; she's less punk than puck. The angel's only "sin" is having a single sexual encounter with a boy she loves--the big-hearted school dork. (Cera, as the dork, is one of the strong points of the movie. His lines aren't any better written than Page's, but his sweet, effeminized delivery of them makes the dialogue--if not more believable--more affecting.) Otherwise, she's in a perfectly loving relationship with supportive father and step-mother; off-handed jokes are made about drugs and alcohol, but these things don't seem to physically exist in this universe. Movies with subject matter like this one's are often applauded for being more "realistic" than your average "Can't Hardly Wait" or "Drive Me Crazy," but, despite the pregnancy, I don't think I've ever seen kids (or adults) as well-adjusted as these. This might as well be a "very special episode" of "Father Knows Best."

"Juno" is mildly funny--in a Vaudeville, eye-roller type of way--but it scant deserves any of the laudatory talk it's garnered. James Berardinelli calls it "the kind of the film where a viewer almost needs to look for a reason to dislike it for it not to work." Well, I didn't have to look too far to realize how sloppily plotted this was: key moments of the stories come quickly, illogically and without build-up. For instance, there's no mention of how Juno is treated as the girl-who-got-pregnant at her high school until it's suddenly a big deal (and even then, we see no real evidence of it). Also, Bateman, the likable ex-rocker, turns pedophile douche bag awfully quick; he becomes so low that there's no indication that he plans to even help out with raising the baby after divorcing Garner at the end.

And while my beef with Juno's (and everyone else's) so-called wisecracks may be personal preference, Ellen Page's performance is hardly internalized; she's okay with timing, but all the movie does is have her blab on and on--not as a self-defense mechanism, but bad writing. (In the actress' defense, Juno's dilemma is treated as nothing more important than the usual lovelorn teen-movie girl problems--she wonders if it's really possible for two people to be happy together forever.) Juno acts more sophisticated than she is, but not in the way real girls her age do; she delivers self-conscious lines that make it sound like she's a wizened sixty-year-old living it up in a sixteen-year-old's body. (Juno's friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) seemed more like a real girl of that age and was often funnier to me than the title character.)

I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewers were right and this went on to be the next "Little Miss Sunshine," which despite its sitcom family foibles, had some genuine characters in original situations--and saved its contrivances for the end. "Knocked Up," which, like "Juno," was categorized as "realistic" and "hip," may have actually been; it was easy-going and playful and didn't have to mention the nineteen-seventies punk scene for audience approval. "Juno" pretends to be cooler and funnier than it really is; it's more like a real teenager than any featured in the movie.