Characters Don’t Add Up in ‘Crime + Punishment’

Those who manage to make it through to the end of “Crime + Punishment inSuburbia” may well feel that the “crime” was that it was made in the first place and the “punishment” is having to watch it.

Jonathan Kaplan’s unsettling 1979 “Over the Edge” was a groundbreaker in the depiction of alienated kids at loose in an arid new tract-house community, and when it comes to dissecting the dysfunctional suburban family, “American Beauty” would be hard to top.

Director Rob Schmidt and writer Larry Gross inevitably bring to mind those two films without coming even remotely within shouting distance of them.

Monica Keena plays the stolid, bosomy Roseanne, who lives in a luxurious, outsized tract house with her sullen mother, Maggie (Ellen Barkin), and Maggie’s husband, Fred (Michael Ironside, at his least subtle), a crude, drunken, tyrant forever reminding Maggie and Roseanne that they would be in the gutter if it were not for him. (We know nothing of Roseanne’s actual father or his fate.)

Although her personality verges on blankness, Roseanne is supposedly the most popular girl in school, and she has the requisite football-player boyfriend (James DeBello), whose clumsy, aggressive advances she is fighting off all the time.

She is constantly being watched by a skinny kid with a camera (Vincent Kartheiser), whose weirdness gives way to the not entirely convincingly beatific.

You wouldn’t want to give any of these people the time of day in real life. They are blah or worse, and they are headed for some violent confrontations that seem pointless because they are so unworthy of our attention in the first place.

*

At first you think the filmmakers are attempting dark comedy, but you can’t say for certain and soon you don’t care one way or another. “Crime + Punishment” offers the worst case scenario: It’s trashy without being fun.

What the filmmakers do have in mind is redemption for some of these people, but they have given us no reason to care about any of them. (Only DeBello and Wright manage to work up any humor or personality.)

Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski’s gorgeous, stylized images and Michael Brook’s score, plus music supervisor Liza Richardson’s selection of songs are so strong they overwhelm the film, serving only to underline its pretentiousness.

* MPAA rating: R, for brutal violence, strong sexuality, language and substance abuse. Times guidelines: The MPAA rating covers all bases.

‘Crime + Punishment in Suburbia”

Vincent Kartheiser: Vincent

Monica Keena: Roseanne

Ellen Barkin: Maggie

James DeBello: Jimmy

Michael Ironside: Fred

Jeffrey Wright: Chris

A United Artists Films presentation of a Killer Films production. Director Rob Schmidt. Producers Pamela Koffler, Larry Gross, Christine Vachon. Screenplay Gross. Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski. Editor Gabriel Wrye. Music Michael Brook. Costumes Soohie de Rakoff Carbonelli. Production designer Ruth Ammon. Set decorator Amy Botefuhr Vuckovich. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

At selected theaters.