As the movie ended, I turned to one of my fellow manly men and said, "It takes a bad movie to show us what good movies are."

Director: David Nutter

Stars: Jimmy Marsden, Katie Holmes, Nick Stahl, Steve Railsback

Rating: R

Release: 07-24-1998

Time: 83 minutes

Buy Movie at Amazon.com That might not be an entirely fair assessment of DB, it's not a bad movie, but it is also far from good. Although it offers a good, spooky atmosphere, and some solid performances from the leads, the storytelling falls down with a loud thud.

The limping story concerns Steve, a newcomer to town, and what he faces at the local high school. In addition to the usual grief that teens dish out to aliens, Steve must contend with the growing clique called the Blue Ribbons. No, they aren't cows gone horribly social, they are in fact, perfect youths. Athletic A+-students that hangout at the yogurt shoppe and are well-groomed and well-mannered. The only exceptions to their Jack Armstrong behavior patterns occur when they become sexually aroused. During these libidinous moments the kids aren't alright and begin bursts of rage that resemble our visions of O. J.'s final attack on Nicole.

As the story unravels (it doesn't really unfold) it turns out the kids have implants in their heads and have undergone conditioning at the hands of the school's ultra-smooth guidance counselor Prime.

What could have been a nice look at how far we will go to attain public acceptance, how far parents will go to have kids that achieve and "fit," is instead just a pointless exercise that drops every good moment to play to the audience.

I think this says it all:

In the end, all the kids roiled to madness by a sonic anti-rat device, ride off a cliff heaped on top of an El Camino driven by a man who pretended to be retarded but is given away by the fact that he had a copy of Slaughterhouse Five in his back pocket.

Really.