Virtuous
high school student Mandy Lane is the polar opposite of Stephen King’s Carrie
White. The guys want to sleep with her
and the girls want the status of being her frienemy. She is not really into the
scene, but she agrees to a weekend getaway to be sociable. Naturally, everyone soon becomes the prey of
a serial killer in Jonathan Levine’s All
the Boys Love Mandy Lane (trailer here), which finally opens today in New York.
The
last time Lane tried this partying thing, it ended in tears. At a fateful poolside shindig, Lane’s
reluctantly platonic artsy friend Emmet convinces a big dumb jock to attempt a
high dive from his roof to impress the unobtainable bombshell. He misses. It seems like Emmet left himself
plenty of plausible deniability, but he winds up shunned by everyone, including
you-know-who. Obviously, this episode looms large for Lane when she accepts Red’s
invitation for what he hopes will be a few days of debauchery at his family
ranch.
It
is awkward right from the start. Lane
rebuffs everyone’s advances, but seems kind of sort of interested in the
legally adult ranch hand, Garth. Only
the school floozy agrees to sleep with any of Lane’s frustrated admirers, but
she soon pays for her bad judgment.
Before long, the kids are dropping one by one, like a hornier,
binge-drinking version of Agatha Christie’s And
Then There Were None.
ATBLML appears to be a
case of absence making the heart grow fonder.
It first hit the festival circuit in 2006. Subsequently, it was picked up by Weinstein,
who later sold it to another distributor that went under shortly
thereafter. When the rights dust finally
settled, Weinstein re-acquired the film—and now here it is, rather
underwhelming given its elusive rep.
Frankly,
this is merely a serviceable dead teenager movie, executed with a measure of
style, but not a lot of inspiration. It
gets the high school vibe right, but the genre stuff is all strictly by the
numbers. In fact, the big switcheroo is
so conspicuously obvious, it feels rather anti-climatic when the shoe finally
drops.
Some
viewers might also be intrigued to catch up with early screen turns from Amber
Heard and Anson Mount from Hell on Wheels. While they are perfectly adequate as Lane and
the Garth the protective cowpoke, their work in the film never screams “star in
the making.” Perhaps Whitney Able fares
the best as Chloe the high maintenance party girl, whereas the rest of the
ensemble is rather anonymous.
