Q: Oh man. If you want to give your internal Crow T. Robot a real workout, this is the movie to pop into the ol' VCR. The potential for cut-up lines in this film is just endless.

(Minor spoilers ahead. Hey, do you really care if a film of this quality is "spoiled?") Traci is a girl with a problem. Psychology has developed names for it when a child develops a sexual crush on the opposite-sex parent. But this girl seems to have one for her same-sex one, and I don't think there's a term for that. It might be because her mother Dana is played by Rosanna Arquette, whose cute overbite, neo-flowerchild sexuality and luscious figure makes me forgive her any number of bad movies or unsympathetic characters. Here Dana is not only clueless to her daughter's conduct; she seems to be competing for the gold medal in the Olympic Indulgent Mother competition.

It's possible that Dana misses Traci's murderous streak because truth be told, Traci seems to have the criminal skills of a hamster. It's only because the script dictates so that she manages to pull off any kind of a body count.

A particularly hilarious note in this movie is the character of Carmen, a Mexican maid who is described by Dana as around so long she's like one of the family although she dresses in what the director thought would say, "I just fell off the tomato truck from Guadalajara." Carmen is so wise to Traci's scheming, she might also wear a sign saying, "Hey, I'm the Next Victim!" Sure enough, Traci confronts Carmen as Carmen is making her way back from Mass, and bops her with one of those slightly angled lug wrenches that car manufacturers put next to your spare as a bad joke. I rather suspect than in real life those things are as useless as a murder weapon as they are for changing a tire.

In another sequence, Arquette wears a flimsy dress to a vineyard, under cloudy skies, talking to the owner. Cut to her in another flimsy dress under sunny skies, talking to the owner's brother. Then cut to her wearing the first dress, in the first location, under cloudy skies - but it's supposed to be later. You get the picture. We're talking really bad directing.

As for skin, don't expect much, although Traci does own a nice couple of bikinis.

For those looking for a trash wallow, 8. For anybody else, 1/2. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: Yes, MTV there really is a way to market Daria. What started as a clever teenage angst-"comment on everything that sucks and make the viewer feel better about their sucky teenage life" sitcom now mutated into a "how you should deal with your problems"-charade. I used to watch Daria all the time and loved it. Now, sitting here after watching the so called "movie" I can only wonder what the point of this all was. Daria tells us how to lead out life in college? Excuse me? didn't the point Daria made every episode that what you like to do is ok, as long as it is ok with yourself no matter what the rest of the sick sad world thinks of it? This entire thing reminded me of the scene in "Reality Bites" the movie channel shows the documentry for the first time. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: No matter how well meaning his "message" is - this film is a terribly made trainwreck - awful acting, lame camera work - I do not know why Carr agreed to try and pull off a stutter - he is lousy at it. You watch the extras on the DVD and the way he has a camera follow him around - he just soaks it up - he loves being the center of attention. He is a bad actor - he reminds me of another arrogant filmmaker - Eric Schaffer. Some how Carr has had this film shown at city Youth Centers and New Age churches - where damaged people looking for reinforcement and attention themselves babble on about how the film touched them and maybe it did - but as a film itself it is choppy, predictable and sappy. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: A friend told me of John Fante last summer after we got into a conversation about Charles Bukowski. I did not know that Fante was a favorite writer of Bukowski's - an author with similar edge and humor except from one generation earlier. 'Ask the Dust' was the first Fante book I read, and it remains one of my favorite novels. The novel was a brilliant piece of writing about a sad, frightened young writer posing to himself and the outside world as an overconfident, masterfully talented author who had no idea how to write about the real world experiences he had none of. In the novel the protagonist is a virgin, with no idea how to win the graces of the women he desperately wants to write about in magazines. The story of his bizarre relationship with Camilla, how he settles for his first sexual experience with a 'wounded' admirer, and how he eventually is left with nothing but the story of his failed attempts at love is biting and real, with no touching Hollywood ending. The film adaptation stays true to the book for a while, but meanders into the cinematic trap of love persevering through racism, sickness and death. The heart of this story lies in the fact that Bandini is a jerk and Camilla is f-ing crazy, and their love never was and never would be the real thing, no matter how much either of them wanted to find it in each other. This movie tore out the real meaning of the story out and replaced it with schlock. I can't believe the man who wrote Chinatown could read this book and make a movie about it that got it so wrong. OPTIONS:
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A: negative