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Crazy/ Beautiful, 2001

Another teen movie to add to my growing collection. I don't know if I have mentioned it but I do have a goal to watch as many teen movies as possible before I grow out of them. So this review is based on a movie that I found by literally Googling teen movies and this was on some list on some blog. But of course I didn't jump into this movie without some sort of research especially since its so readily available. Crazy/ Beautiful was rated as average, the type of movie that was good but not excellent but not bad enough for people to remember and way too much drug references for it to be in day time television. Looking into the trailer I did have a very distinct idea of what it is about. Although Crazy/ Beautiful wasn't too far out from that perception but half way through the movie I was genuinely questioning whether I was completely wrong.

Since I just finishing watching it and it is rather fresh in my mind its probably be a relatively short review.

Crazy/ Beautiful sets itself up pretty quickly - boy and his "homies" are chilling in the beach boardwalk when they set their eyes on a girl in short-shorts and t-shirt and clearly not wearing a bra. But she is picking up rubbish and what looks like some community services thing. Of course they meet and realise that they go to the same school. Romance blooms between the boy who is a straight A Latino student Carlos (Jay Hernandez) and crazy rich white girl, Nicole. The obvious tension comes from the cultural differences but from the trailer it alludes that this movie isn't about racial problems that could occur but something that much more destructive to a budding romance.

Crazy/ Beautiful although isn't original in concept however does have a slightly different approach to teenagers than most teen movies do. For one thing it doesn't actually glamorize all the partying that Nicole gets up to. Strangely enough it is much less focused on what other people think and less focused on the perception of the high school. In other words there is no high school hierarchy, we have no idea if Nicole is popular or if Carlos is popular but it doesn't matter. This is about a relationship that can be destructive. Considering there are some really complex and heavy material to deal with and that probably needs to explore in more detail rather the nice warm fuzzy but slightly unrealistic ending. I did not think this was going to really explore the real issues but there is a slight distaste at the end. A part of me thinks this is bullshit as if these will actually go down then part of realises that these are teenagers and teenagers are known to be pretty reckless. But the movie does redeem itself a little when they do stop acting like reckless teenagers and go back to reality.

Overall Crazy/ Beautiful was a decent watch not amazing and rather forgettable. For me it gets brownie points for trying to move away from the typical things that usually included in teen movies - the over emphasis on sex and glamorising partying (over the top partying of course parties can be awesome) also avoid the stereotypes such as jocks and popular. All that shit is gotten rid and really looks at a relationship between two very young people. I would give this movie a 6.25/10.

There's the link to the trailer Trailer Link

This is a short review. Sometimes you need some quickies. That's what your mama told me last night