Highly Overrated But Still Good

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The Crush (1993) ** (out of 4) Nick Eliot (Cary Elwes) is a journalist who rents out a guest house and soon becomes friends with the owner's fourteen-year-old daughter Darian (Alicia Silverstone). It doesn't take long for Nick to realize that the young's girls ideas of a friendship are a lot more than what he is willing to give and soon her crush turns into something more dangerous.After the success of FATAL ATTRACTION we were getting all sorts of psycho thrillers. Films like SINGLE WHITE FEMALE and THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE were finding audiences so obviously another step was to make on dealing with a LOLITA type of character. THE CRUSH isn't a very original movie and for a thriller it contains no thrills so on that level it's really not that successful, which is too bad because there are a few good things sprinkled throughout the picture.The main reason to watch the movie are for the performances. The actors at least keep you glued into what's going on even though everything is pretty predictable unless you've never seen this type of film before. Elwes is very believable in his role as the writer who finds himself getting too much attention. You've got Silverstone in his screen debut doing a nice job as the troubled woman but there's no question that the screenplay really didn't give her too much to work with. She pulls off the sexy Lolita just fine but the mental issues of the character are never really explored. Jennifer Rubin is good as Elwes' love interest and Kurtwood Smith gets some good scenes as the girl's father.The biggest issue with this movie is that we've seen it countless times before and there's not a single original idea on display here. Even the sexual undertones are kept pretty minimum and instead we're basically seeing a watered down version of LOLITA. The fact that there's not any suspense and hell, there's not even a body count shows that this movie would have been better off on Lifetime instead of in theaters.

"Nick Eliot" (Cary Elwes) has just moved to Seattle and needs a place to stay prior to working as an investigative journalist for a magazine there. He settles on a semi-furnished guest house belonging to a married couple by the name of Cliff Forrester (Kurtwood Smith) and his wife "Liv" (Gwynyth Walsh). Also there is their 14-year-old daughter "Adrian" (Alicia Silverstone) who immediately develops a crush on Nick. Since he is twice her age he figures that her attraction to him is nothing serious. Big mistake. Anyway, as far as this film is concerned it pretty much follows the standard format of any number of similar movies made both before and after. However, what distinguishes this one is the performance of Alicia Silverstone in her very first film debut. Likewise, both Jennifer Rubin (as "Amy") and the aforementioned Cary Elwes also performed quite well too. Again, the story is pretty formulaic but even so I thought it was still enjoyable. Accordingly, I rate this movie as slightly above average.

Seems strange to review the first film of Alicia, decades after it was released, and now that Alicia is a senior actress of sorts. This film is perhaps the nth of its kind... fatal attraction for a person and its associated problems. Wonky lips Alicia impresses in her debut movie. But the film, in itself, is full of gaps and plot holes. Deserted rooms full of burning candles.. wow. No doubt that Adrienne lit them.. but what about the fire hazard, in a building with wooden walls and floors? And how did the candles remain lit? Surely they would exhaust after sometime? The girlfriend, Amy, gets stung by a bunch of bees, suffocates and almost dies. Adrienne's mischief once again. But the hero kind of forgets to visit her in the hospital. Amy reappears at the end, looking as fit and fine as she was.. no change in her appearance. Good. Should I reveal more plot holes? OK... Adrienne's friend, Cheyenne, is about to be killed, tied to a carousel. Our hero is hell bent on rescuing her. But when she is finally discovered, our hero is more concerned about the welfare of the troublemaker, Adrienne.. poor Cheyenne remains tied. I am not sure how she was rescued at the end.Hmmm.. now I am bored. So let the next viewer report more plot holes. It is a pity that no movie has ever been made on Daisy Duck. Alicia, without any prosthetic makeup, would have been a dead ringer for the role. With perhaps Chris Sarandon as Donald. But forget all that and enjoy Alicia's pout in this debut film. Its her film all the way.

I agree that Silverstone is superb as a combination of 'Lolita' and 'Bad Seed.' Her ability to play the innocent is brought off very well because she conveys a sense of really caring for Nick, within one field of her ambivalence. I do have some problems with the film. Perhaps foremost is Nick's inability to just get the hell out of there. He should have done that much sooner. Or -- was the film suggesting that his fascination with the Silverstone character is keeping him around? That the girl could rewrite Nick's story and improve it strained credulity. The film dropped Nick's professional issues almost completely about a third of the way through. We got no sense of the huge interview he pulled off. That the girl could convince doctors of the event she claimed even having planted evidence struck me as completely impossible. The ending involved a transition to surrealism that the film had not prepared for. It was as if the film were figuring out its stylistic and generic premises as it went along. Why can't filmmakers produce coherent finished products anymore? Is it in response to the post-modernist attack on 'thematic unity' or just plain sloppiness. This could have been a great film.