Nicole, Kirsten Dunst, meets Carlos, Jay Hernandez, on the beach in California while she`s doing community service after a drink driving conviction and he`s with his Mexican mates ogling women. They both attend the same high school on the Pacific Palisades - he travels two hours by bus to get there, she lives in Malibu, the daughter of a Congressman Tom Oakley, Bruce Davison. But she`s a troubled daughter, her mother`s absent and she`s alienated herself from her father and stepmother and their new baby. She`s drinking too much, partying too much with her friend Maddy, Teryn Manning. But her flirtation with the more grounded and motivated Carlos changes things - he knows this school is his chance to get out of the barrio, he wants to get into Annapolis and become a navy pilot.....This is not a stupid teen movie, partly because the screenplay seems based on a recognisable reality and very much because of the performances of both Kirsten Dunst and Jay Hernandez. It does tend to follow a familiar path but it has enough substance to lift it out of a cliched mould. There`s an honesty of emotion here. I like the way director John Stockwell doesn`t subtitle Carlos` mother played by Soledad St Hilaire. It`s obvious what she`s saying: `stop seeing that rich white girl!`. Stockwell was the writer of Rock Star and this is his second gig as director - the other one was way back in the late eighties, he`s been an actor and writer in the meantime.
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