Teen Angst by the Numbers in Heckerling’s ‘Loser’

It takes a lot of chutzpah to recycle Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” for a plaintive movie interlude, almost as much as it takes to title your movie “Loser.” That’s about as far as nerve takes writer-director Amy Heckerling in her formulaic new teen opus, which is unique mostly for its refusal to indulge the hard-sell, gross-out desires of its intended youth market.

There are a number of losers in “Loser,” most prominently the NYU freshman played with disarming affability by “American Pie” alum Jason Biggs. Sporting a forceps-style haircut (a la Shemp of the Three Stooges) that always springs back to life no matter how much he presses it down with a dorky sheepskin hat, Paul inspires derision wherever he goes. Primarily, he suffers from a surfeit of Gomer Pyle congeniality in an MYOB metropolis. But it’s enough to invoke the wrath of his roommates, a trio of losers (Zak Orth, Tom Sadoski and Jimmi Simpson) in the guise of cool rich kids.

Paul’s no-win campaign to gain their acceptance collides with his misguided efforts to seduce fellow student Dora Diamond (Mena Suvari). Smart and sexy in the over-cosmeticized style of Heckerling heroines in “Clueless” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Dora is the It girl of Paul’s dreams. But Dora’s reality is something else again, as she struggles with a cheesy, sleep-depriving nightclub job and an equally degrading affair with English lit professor Edward Alcott (Greg Kinnear, laying on the smarmy older-guy butter with a trowel).

Underlying the schematic setup are some very credible truths about the conformist pressures and financial-aid issues that beset college-age kids--this is prime Heckerling territory, after all. But the pretensions of her antagonists lack the satirical snap that characterizes her best movies: Professor Alcott prefers his tea in cups, not mugs, thank you very much, while Paul’s three contemptible roommates loll around in improbable beauty salons like Clare Luce’s gossiping society women.

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Just as unlikely are the gyrations Heckerling puts her hero through to demonstrate his purity of heart. As Biggs works admirably to underplay Paul’s anti-hip energy, we are asked to believe that he would give Dora flowers and then attribute the gesture to the loutish Kinnear, all in the name of true love. Does such selflessness exist, at any age? Paul hails from some rural middle-American community, not the little town of Bethlehem.

Presumably Heckerling was suffering a bad hair day when she decided to tack on the embarrassing what-happened-to explanations of each character’s fate at the end of the film. Sendups of true-story epilogues are as corny as Kansas in August, which is also when this summer fluff ball should blow away from multiplexes everywhere.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for drug content, crude sexual material and language. Times guidelines: Not as gross or raunchy as some teen comedies, but there are scenes of drug use and implied date rape.

‘Loser’

Jason Biggs: Paul Tannek

Mena Suvari: Dora Diamond

Zak Orth: Adam

Tom Sadoski: Chris

Greg Kinnear: Professor Edward Alcott

Dan Aykroyd: Dad

Columbia Pictures presents a Cockamamie Production. Director Amy Heckerling. Producers Amy Heckerling, Twink Caplan. Executive producer John M. Eckert. Screenplay Amy Heckerling. Cinematographer Rob Hahn. Editor Debra Chiate. Costume designer Mona May. Music David Kitay. Music supervisor Elliot Lurie. Production designer Steven Jordan. Art director Andrew M. Stearn. Set decorator Patricia Cuccia. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

In general release.