Crazy/Beautiful offers a refreshingly grown up alternative to the typical teen movies saturating the multiplexes. The tale of the poor little rich girl falling in love with the guy from the wrong side of the tracks is one that's been told numerous times in the movies, but rarely with such understanding and feeling.
Under the taut direction of John Stockwell, the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi never wallows too long in sentimentality or allows itself indulgent flights of fancy, instead it remains grounded in reality as much as possible. What makes the incredible love story credible is the chemistry of Dunst and Hernandez that illuminates the film and provides it with an unquestionable authenticity.
Carlos (Jay Hernandez) and his mates spot Nicole on Santa Monica beach picking up trash as part of her community service for a drunk driving offence. Although the 17-year-old Nicole lives in a palatial beachfront property in Malibu while Carlos comes from an impoverished Hispanic family in downtown Boyle Heights, it turns out the two go to the same Pacific High school.
The school represents very different things for each of them. For the ambitious Carlos, who has excellent grades and stars on the football team, it provides an opportunity to better himself and get into Naval Academy where he hopes to become a pilot. As such it is worth getting up early every morning to take the long bus trip from his home to the more salubrious setting of Pac High. Nicole's much shorter and reluctant journey to school is either made in her own car or that of her best friend Maddy (Taryn Manning). Once there, the two girls have little interest in attending classes, instead preferring to hang out getting wasted along with the other privileged slackers.
Nicole's downslide began with her mother's suicide when Nicole was 12. The event isolated her, creating an embittered adolescent contemptuous of everything and everyone, including her congressman father (Bruce Davison) and stepmother (Lucinda Jenney) who ignores Nicole, devoting all her energies to her own baby.
Nicole's loveless life suddenly changes when she meets Carlos. However, the positive effects for both soon become undermined by the negative, particularly for Carlos whose focussed attention on escaping his under privileged background becomes sidetracked as their relationship intensifies.
Crazy/Beautiful deals earnestly and affectingly with how the two cope with the inevitable hurdles their love brings. The only problem is that by successfully avoiding all the usual clichés and puerility of contemporary teen movies, the film is in danger of discouraging the very audience it's aimed at which would be a shame as something this good deserves to be seen.
