Synopsis
At school, Roseanne is the object of fellow student Vincent's infatuation. By night, she deals with a troubled family life: her mother, Maggie, cheats on her drunken husband, Fred. When Maggie's adultery is revealed, Fred viciously takes his anger out on stepdaughter Roseanne. With the help of her boyfriend, Jimmy, Maggie plots her revenge, but Vincent might be the one to help her forge a new life in this contemporary fable loosely based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment".
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Cast
- Monica KeenaRoseanne Skolnick
- Ellen BarkinMaggie Skolnick
- Michael IronsideFred Skolnick
- Vincent KartheiserVincent
- James DeBelloJimmy
- Jeffrey WrightChris
- Conchata FerrellBella
- Marshall R. TeagueCoach
- Nicki AycoxCecil
- Lucinda JenneyVincent's Mom
Recommendations
- 75
Chicago Sun-Times
A messy but hungry film like this is more interesting than cool technical perfection. - 75
New York Daily News
Sloppy, self-satisfied and surprisingly heartfelt. - 63
New York Post
Less an updated version of the Dostoevsky novel than an unusually somber Hollywood teen love story. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
Melodramatic look at alienated California high school students. - 38
Chicago Tribune
Just say no. - 25
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Not faithful enough to be an adaptation, too misguided to be considered an interpretation, and not funny enough to be a parody, this film would do well not to advertise its inspiration. - 20
Salon
Even dressed up in tabloid lighting and cut with jagged edits, this pulp nihilism never goes beyond daytime TV banality. - 20
The New York Times
Completed before the release of "American Beauty," this contrived, puffed up little picture nonetheless seems like a ripoff, perhaps because it mines the same tired assumptions and unexamined stereotypes about suburban family life.
