This is a great film to watch in the background. It’s kind of funny to me watching this now ‘cos there was definitely a time I remember vividly when I had some weird, desperate desire to see it, I think it was the first issue of “Film Review” that I bought, the dates match up. I guess at that time (‘95/’96), I hadn’t seen half of what I’ve seen now… I hadn’t been to America and bought my illegal tapes of Natural Born Killers and The Exorcist and A Clockwork Orange, so for some reason it probably seemed shockingly rebellious or something, y’know, kids speeding in cars, smoking, etc(?). Now, I’m like, “Why?” lol.

I guess it was made in Drew Barrymore’s down period, but between her and Joan Allen, it kind of seems insanely cast, I mean I love to see those two in anything these days, then there’s O’Donnell, Matthew Lillard, and Liev Shreiber. Drew is hotter than ever, and I loved some of the direction. There’s a scene where Drew and Chris O’Donnell are walking outside of class and she is smoking and a tutor comes up behind them, like walking the way generic tutors walk, looking for someone to catch doing something, and their eyes are on Drew smoking then there’s a noise offscreen, some jocks yelling or whatever, and that takes priority, the tutor moving mechanically on, all of this completely unnoticed by the young couple.

I couldn’t even begin to relate the story to you or anything like that… sometimes all you need is a pretty face and a logical progression of images to occupy your partially attentive mind, and for me, this works perfectly. You can’t get better than Drew. She turns in an eventually Robin-Tunney-in-Niagara-Niagara (but not quite…) performance here, and like I said, she’s red hot. I wanna see Face, by the same director, Antonia Bird now, probably accompanied by a second viewing of Drew Barrymore in her best film, Riding in Cars with Boys, and the aforementioned, superior, Niagara, Niagara.

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