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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
TWELVE Adapted from a slim 2002 novel written by then-17-year-old Nick McDonnell, Twelve follows a group of privileged Upper East Side prep school kids on summer break. With their parents are off on various European vacations, the teenagers have little else to do other than partying, and these kids know how to party hard. Their go-to guy for recreational substances is former classmate White Mike (Chace Crawford), who dropped out a year earlier after his mother died of cancer. The casting of Crawford, an earnest enough cross-eyed young actor who sports a windswept quaff with the perfect amount of facial stubble, is a serious misstep. His scenes with his drug supplier, Lionel (Curtis Jackson, aka rapper 50 Cent), are simply not convincing. Crawford has absolutely nothing of the hustler in his demeanor. Though Lionel tries to convince White Mike to sell twelve, a blend of cocaine and Ecstasy, White Mike draws the line in the sand at this especially addictive new drug. White Mike, it appears, has a conscious. He also chooses to abstain from all mood-altering substances. As explained by a friend, it’s his way to yield some power over his clientele. White Mike is very hard to understand as a result of these conflicting traits. We’re supposed to sympathize with him because he lost his mom (she appears in gauzy over-exposed flashbacks), plus the fact that his father lost his restaurant business and now waits table. But how are we to like him when he is contributing to the drug habits of everyone he knows? His only real emotional connection is with a childhood friend, Molly (Emma Roberts), whom he keeps in the dark about his occupation. He spends most of the movie on his cell phone talking with Molly or trying to find the whereabouts of a troubled cousin who disappears early in the story. Not since the heyday of film noir have voice-overs worked to enhance movies; nowadays they are more often added as a way to fix them. In the case of Twelve, the voice-over is contributed by Kiefer Sutherland at his gravely finest, sounding too grim or plain flip and never quite in sync with the movie’s tone. Even without actually seeing Sutherland, his presence hovers throughout. He’s a direct link to such ’80s movie as Bright Lights, Big City (in which he co-starred) and Less Than Zero (in which he didn’t), two adaptations also written by youths culling their own experiences in similar circumstances. And as bad as the young adults behaved in those latter movies (they are now old enough to be the parents of these kids), they have far more redeeming qualities than the kids in Twelve; the possible exception being Chris (a convincing Rory Culkin), who lends out his parent’s house to the head mean girl who wants to throw herself an 18th birthday no one will forget. She certainly gets what she wants mostly thanks to Chris’s older bully of a brother, Claude (Billy Magnussen), who has cut short a stint at rehab. Twelve
is yet another addition to director Joel Schumacher’s rather uneven
filmography, which includes two forgettable Batman movies and two
watchable John Grisham adaptations. Twelve will not stand with
his strongest contributions, but it isn’t his worse either. As
forgettable as this movie is, it will never make it into that league of
laughably bad films (Showgirls, Troll 2, etc.). I’d
sooner recommend renting any of the first three seasons of Gossip
Girl, which are currently available. Adam Schartoff
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