Movie : Implausible ‘Crush’ Puts Yuppie in Peril

It’s nice to know some Hollywood filmmakers have a handle on what’s wrong with the world. While the rest of us fret about the economy, crime, disease, war, ethnic cleansing and other “ephemera,” “The Crush” (citywide) points its finger squarely at a menace too long ignored: lustful 14-year-old girls.

This is one more “yuppie-in-peril” movie, just as slick and empty, manipulative and crude, as most of the rest: all those paranoid pictures bent on scaring us with insane roommates, murderous baby-sitters and killer temps. Here, our “hero-victim” is a young journalist, who unwittingly stumbles into a suburban Hades: hounded by the crazed genius girl next door, who’s determined to seduce him or ruin his life. The prey: GQ coverguy-type Nick Eliot (Cary Elwes). The hunter: his landlord’s daughter, sexy Darian Forrester (Alicia Silverstone), the rich nymphette from Hell.

What’s a poor coverguy to do? Try as he might to preserve his purity, Nick can’t evade the pouty-lipped, jailbait temptress. She parades before him in a bikini and Lolita-glasses, breaks into his apartment at all hours, rolls her eyes and licks her lips. She maneuvers him into her closet and forces him to watch a provocative striptease while he reels with fright.

Then, when Nick fails to respond, she turns nasty. Prank after prank, attack after attack, ending with her piece de resistance : a rape charge that sends Nick to the slammer.

Isn’t it time the writers of Hollywood started rethinking their whole “yuppie-in-peril” program? This sub-genre has gone from nascence (“Jagged Edge”) to over-ripeness (“Fatal Attraction”) to decadence in less than a decade. “The Crush” is a prime example.

Writer-director Alan Shapiro (“Tiger Town”) shows some shallow expertise. He’s hired Bruce Surtees (Clint Eastwood’s erstwhile “Prince of Darkness”) as his cinematographer, flooded the screen with sunlight and fancy decor, and shaped the film so that, by the end, some parts of the audience will be howling for Darian’s blood. “The Crush” (MPAA rated R, for violence and sensuality) tries to tease up lewd fantasies and then wash things clean with a moralizing rampage, stealing from Hitchcock: a murderous merry-go-round battle out of “Strangers From a Train.”

Darian isn’t a wholly ill-drawn character--15-year-old Alicia Silverstone gives easily the film’s best performance--but she’s a crock. Either she’s a cold-blooded psychopath, murderously self-confident in her sex appeal, or she’s an adoring teen-ager. But both?

Other idiocies abound. We’re asked to believe that Darian, to buttress her rape charge, can figure out how to steal Nick’s sperm. We’re informed that Nick, faced with the computer destruction of a cover article and all his notes, just as a magazine meeting opens, can race back home and rewrite it all--from memory-- then whip back and hand it to his editor before the meeting ends. (Is that how this script was written?)

Most of all, we’re asked to believe that a genius concert pianist and writer, world caliber equestrienne and brilliant killer would persist in hopeless infatuation for a character whose major assets seem to be neat housekeeping, a Gap wardrobe and smoking cute cigars.

Come to think of it, that’s one of the least of “The Crush’s” implausibilities. The heart may never know where it listeth, but only the most die-hard “yuppie-in-peril” fans will want to list up here.

‘The Crush’

Cary Elwes: Nick Eliot Alicia Silverstone: Darian Forrester Jennifer Rubin: Amy Kurtwood Smith: Cliff Forrester

A James G. Robinson presentation of a Morgan Creek production, released by Warner Brothers. Director-sccreenwriter Alan Shapiro. Producer James G. Robinson. Executive producer Gary Barber. Cinematographer Bruce Surtees. Editor Ian Crafford. Costumes Sharon Purdy. Music Graeme Revell. Production design Michael S. Bolton. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (Violence, language, sensuality).