good idea, poor execution

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2001)

Recently, I've seen a number of movies which start with a good premise, but are poorly executed. Another example is the 1999 film Deterrence (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0158583).
I like the idea of this movie, but it feels like it was written and directed by a high school drama class. The acting is also straight out of high school. Each of the characters has inexplicable obsessions. Ideally, we'd know more about the history of the characters to make their reactions less strange. But even if we knew more about the characters, it still wouldn't excuse the over-acting used to convey their sometimes bizarre behavior.
I do still recommend seeing this movie for the interesting story line. With a bigger budget and better actors, this could have been a great film.