Skunkyrate
Gripping story with well-crafted characters
ClassyWas
Excellent, smart action film.
Scarlet
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
wes-connors
While picking up trash on the beach, as part of her community service sentence for robbing a "7-Eleven" convenience store, unkempt blonde "rich-girl" Kirsten Dunst (as Nicole Oakley) meets handsome Hispanic "poor boy" Jay Hernandez (as Carlos Nunez). The mutually attracted pair find out they go to the same high school, but have different groups of friends. She likes to go out and get drunk. He wants to get good grades and attend the US Naval Academy. He's on the football team. She's a skank. These differences lead to conflict, which threatens their love relationship. Complicating matters, her father is a Congressman..."Crazy/Beautiful" is interesting in how it switches what you may expect to be the "bad" and "good" characters. With her beauty intentionally toned down (but bouncy sexiness intact), Ms. Dunst identifies her bad-girl as the "crazy" co-star and Mr. Hernandez as the "beautiful" half. The labeling occurs in an amusing scene where Dunst aggressively moves her head down toward Hernandez' lower body, but is interrupted by her father (Bruce Davidson). Hernandez turns away, but Dunst isn't shy about having sex in front of dad because she has retrieved a condom from the kitchen cabinet. Director John Stockwell helms his sexy scenes well...Hernandez is intentionally more beautiful than Dunst. They do not impress as a high school-aged couple, with Hernandez suffering more. His eyebrows are plucked to perfection; obviously, each individual hair was carefully considered before removal. Hernandez' make-up is too delicately applied. With all the loving looks at Hernandez' beautiful chest, we wonder if the character would be more plausible as a professional model than a high school football player. In fact, Hernandez' character could have been a college student and Dunst a high school drop-out. That would have been more convincing. Still, they are great looking couple.***** Crazy/Beautiful (6/28/01) John Stockwell ~ Kirsten Dunst, Jay Hernandez, Bruce Davison, Lucinda Jenney
plex
I was born in the early 60s and grew up in the 70's during my teen years. As a young man, I loved that time: love was open, recreational drugs were plentiful, the economy was decent, and oh, a lot of chicks didn't wear bras. I have read ( yet cannot confirm) that Dunst has some sort of no-bra policy, but I don't recall her mandate ever being obvious in her other films. In this case, it sort of throws a monkey wrench in the credibility machine. Allow me to explain. If you are a teacher or principal at a high school, a doting FATHER, fellow friend, unknown person you engage in public, or a woman who is hell-bent on judging you who has given birth by your father, I cannot imagine ANY scenario where NO ONE ever makes a comment that this teenager never wears a bra, and on top of that, seemingly never washes her greasy hair. This simply makes no sense to me. She not only goes braless, but also wears cut off t-shirts or shirts that are open on the sides, SO, the look is intentional/deliberate and is accentuated. Kirsten's bulbous CC-cups( just guessing the size) bounces throughout the entire film and no one ever seems to care or even notices the slutty appearance of a character who is only 17-18. Even her gal-pal goes braless in a couple of scenes and in a long segment of the movie, she jokes about her forgetting to wear a top. ( she's wearing a micro bra or bikini AS a top) So, at this point I have to conclude this may be not a mandate by our lead but some sort of fantasy whipped up by one of the producers or the director. In 2001, its entirely inappropriate to unilaterally condone this look for a teenager. Thing is, at the core, its a decent teen-romance film, replete with come cliché's but its cool anyway. We LIKE the characters. There's decent acting chops here, along with marginal writing and production skills. Its a good movie. But there is definitely an intent by whomever, for me to be distracted by bouncing breasts, which ( even though titillating) is wildly inappropriate and unrealistically presented in this context.
Geoffrey DeLeons
Certainly, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I will disagree, however, with other reviewers who said the movie is bhoring: I was too busy cringing at the embarrassing behavior of Dunst's character, Nikki to be bhored. I really felt sorry for Hernandez's character, Carlos. We have all hung around with the wrong people for the wrong reasons, but when there IS no reason, like in this movie, then it is just 90 minutes of huge embarrassment: Having a drunk, promiscuous chick with no personality or depth, hanging all over you. Nikki's actions and words beg the questions, "Just how hollow and vacuous can one person be? How pretentious? How much self-awareness and identity can one person lack?" The screen writing is the most drab and lacking-in-quality that I have ever experienced. I managed to watch Crazy/Beautiful until they drove up to Carlos' house and the mother came out. Then, I was done. 90 minutes of a reminder of what the worst night of your life was like, when you were smashed out of your mind on booze. Then again, you had a personality. No one in Crazy/Beautiful does.Absolutely disgraceful, especially considering the potential of the base story.
correcamino
I saw this film after having watched a Prime Time Live in which a particularly disturbed step family is profiled using fixed cameras throughout their home. The father-daughter relationship portrayed in Crazy Beautiful struck me as pretty authentic: the dad, distracted by his new wife and baby, constantly takes the wife's side in her battles with his daughter, and blames his daughter for just about everything. Not only does she not get Dad's attention, she gets his blame. The whole thing felt completely real.So the two main characters are from different classes, but given their relatively young age, it doesn't impede their love. Love and realizing that that love can make them whole is tantalizingly palpable in Crazy Beautiful and overrides everything. It, not class, is the point. I could believe that years from now, they would be each other's strength. They were meant to be together.And yet….the happy ending was pursued with a uniquely American zeal. A zeal for neat and tidy endings. All the complications that had spilled out so beautifully had to be swept up into orderly piles so that Dad no longer resented ANYthing, and for her family it was smooth sailing from here on out. How Carlos's mother felt about the crazy American girl, I guess is completely inconsequential.
