The In Crowd

Written by: Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin Starring: Susan Ward, Lori Heuring, Matthew Settle, Ethan Erickson, Nathan Bexton, Laurie Fortier, Kim Murphy, Daniel Hugh Kelly

This is a bad movie. Extremely bad. Bad in a dreary, depressing way that defies any attempt to validate it as a “guilty pleasure,” or “campy,” or even “so bad it’s good.” It is so bad that it seems as if there were an evil intelligence at work trying to make it as bad as possible. (Unfortunately, no intelligence of any kind can be found within a country mile of this dreadful schlock.) It is as bad as any 35mm Hollywood movie made by ostensible professionals can be (short of having the cameraman’s thumb over the lens, that is). The nicest thing you can say about it is that it’s (mostly) in focus. This movie makes you once again question the validity of a Hollywood system that would permit such a listless and just-plain-stupid movie to be made, when we know there are great screenplays out there just screaming to be produced. I have seen films on the internet (check out “Atom Films” and “iFilm” --they are the wave of the future) that were better made and more entertaining in 10 minutes than this one is in 90.

There are times in a critic’s life when we have to go see a movie just to spare innocent citizens from unnecessary pain. You can thank me later. You really should not see this movie under any circumstances (save, perhaps, if you know or are related to someone in the cast, and have to as a show of support). Let me say just three things about what makes this movie so bad: bad script, bad script, and bad script. Granted, they were not trying to make “Gone With The Wind” here, but we could at least have hoped for a good, bitchy soap opera, with some sex appeal and slasher violence thrown in for good measure. Instead, in Gibson and Halprin’s ham handed script, we get a bunch of college age Gap model look-alikes without an ounce of brains or body fat between them, and there isn’t nearly enough sex or violence in the picture to make up for their lack of anything at all interesting to say or do. Lori Heuring plays Adrien, a girl with some sort of serious but conveniently ill-defined psychological problems, who is sent--as part of her rehabilitation--to work at what is apparently a posh country club.

Once there, she impresses some of the local rich jerks with her unflappability, thereby earning the enmity of queen bitch Brittany (Ward), who has, it seems, a deep, dark secret. For reasons that become less and less clear as the picture drags on, Brittany decides she must do something to Adrien, though whether the plot is to embarrass her or kill her is a bit hard to say. Any number of scenes ensue, though to suggest that they follow in any kind of narrative order would be stretching the definition of order. Incidents and accidents (as well as incidents that only seem like accidents) occur, with a level of suspense and surprise that wouldn’t make the grade on an episode of “Murder, She Wrote,” and action scenes that wouldn’t pass muster on any episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (which, by the way, is a terrific show). The only thing that does seem clear is that the writers really had no idea what they were after here. A class satire? A suspense thriller? A frisky sexcapade? Fatally wounded by this uncertainty, director Lambert (whose career highlight so far seems to have been “Pet Semetary”) hasn’t got a prayer. She struggles, to put it mildly, but to no avail.

From the opening seconds, the film sinks like the ill-fated vessel that it is, dragging her cast and crew with her. It may not be fair to grade Lambert’s directing skill on the basis of this picture; I doubt that David Lean could have made a decent one out of this script, but it does call into question her judgment (not to mention that of the people who decided to spend millions of dollars--and I’m being generous, because, on top of everything else, the picture looks pretty pathetic--to make it). The movie can’t even offer up a decent sense of humor. Sometimes a bad picture’s only hope is to not take itself too seriously, but “The In Crowd” does so, again and again and again. By now, some of you may be wondering why, if the movie is so bad you shouldn’t see it, you should bother reading anything further about it. And you know what? You’ve got a point. (7/31/2000)