The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 296 Days to go: 286
Movie #77: The Crush
I bought The Crush on DVD approximately around the time DVDs were invented, as evidenced by the cardboard casing with the plastic flip closure. I’m not sure why I still have it, except for the fact (previously discussed) that I rarely get rid of my movies. I do, however, know exactly why I bought it in the first place, and that reason is Alicia Silverstone.
As far as feature film debuts go, Silverstone really knocked hers out of the park. Playing 14-year-old Adrian Forrester (IMDb says Adrienne, which is the correct spelling of the feminine form of the name, but the movie credits say Adrian, so that’s what I’m going with), she is riveting from her very first shot — haughty, sexy and entitled as she peers at Nick (Cary Elwes) from over the tops of her sunglasses. She is brilliant at appearing innocent, as manipulative as she is spoiled, and she’s a veritable loon. Her obsession with Nick becomes ever more forward, ever more ominous and ever more dangerous, yet it’s impossible to look away from her because she commands the screen so completely.
The rest of the film, unfortunately, is hugely problematic. It’s bad enough that it’s just ridiculously cheesy and melodramatic. The score is overpowering in its guitar-riff-and-synthesizer insistence that you feel on edge. The soundtrack is even worse, with a scene in which Adrian is sunning herself under Nick’s window (where else would she do it?) backed by a song crying out “You can taste it.” And the climactic confrontation between Nick, Adrian, Adrian’s friend Cheyenne (Amber Benson looking almost exactly how she will nine years later for Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Adrian’s dad (Kurtwood Smith), employs the use of a stunt double for Silverstone that is at least four inches taller than she is and has a much darker complexion — even behind the Cousin Itt wig.
What makes the film truly terrible, though, is the message it sends. Here’s some upstanding guy, innocently going about his work, and this crazy girl starts making all sorts of accusations and ruins his life. Sure, he ogles her repeatedly through windows — not to mention from the vantage point of her own closet — and he makes inviting comments about what he would do if she were ten years older, and, okay, he totally kisses her back when she twisted his arm, forced him to take her to a make-out spot, took his head in her hands and slowly started to kiss him. But other than that, he didn’t do anything wrong! (Kidding, she totally didn’t twist his arm. He barely gave up any resistance to a late-night drive with a teenage girl, and Elwes frequently enhances his performance with the universal I’ve-got-an-uncomfortable-boner cough.)
Yes, the film makes it absolutely clear that Adrian is an obsessive sociopath and criminally insane, but it’s exactly these types of stories that make so many people discount actual victim accounts of assaults, harassment and rape. There is, almost always in the case of these types of accusations, a pervasive thread that questions the girl’s motives, assumes she is out to get something, or sometimes might just be a vengeful crazy bitch who wants to ruin a guy’s life. There were boys on video sexually assaulting an unconscious girl in Ohio, and the media still lamented the loss of their promising futures, as if that was the real tragedy here — as if those boys didn’t bring it on entirely by themselves. It’s disgusting, really.
I can’t stop these types of stories from being told, and I may not be able to change the conversation concerning assaults in our society, but I can do something. I can purge The Crush from my shelf and I can make an effort not to support that kind of storytelling in the future. I’ll feel much better just supporting Silverstone’s work in Clueless anyway.
Viable Option 