Review of Jawbreaker (1999) by James S — 14 Aug 2011

Can't decide if you're in the mood for Heathers or Mean Girls? Neither can Jawbreaker.

Diving in head first with a bit of pre-opening titles accidental murder, Jawbreaker goes on to chronicle the break down of Rose McGowan, Julie Benz and Rebecca Gayheart's high school clique and the attempt to cover up and buy the silence of Judy Greer, the geek who knows their big secret, by making her popular and sh*t.

It's an intriguing idea, particularly from the perspective of Greer's character who effectively sells her soul to the devil for the reward of joining him. Rose McGowan's performance is brilliant as the groups evil ring leader. She echos much of the malice that Heather Chandler did in Heathers, only she's even worse. Teenagers as comically diabolical as McGowan is in this film usually only appear in comic books.

McGowan works her butt off in this movie which is why it's a great shame that everything else falls apart around her.

The film jumps into the action so quickly that it doesn't set up the friendship between the clique at all which is a mistake. It's briefly filled in, and then again unnecessarily irritatingly towards the end but the film shouldn't need to insult its audiences intelligence in such a manner. The plot then jumps forward in sometimes gigantic leaps as characters seemingly just flip from one emotion to the next. Rebecca Gayheart suddenly has a conscience and a crush on some dude. Who is he? We've no idea. By the end of the film, we still don't know where this guy comes from even though he hangs about for the whole movie.

There is probably a wealth of scenes from Jawbreaker lying on a cutting room floor somewhere as it's hard to believe that anyone would write a script which was so badly put together, particularly when some of the dialogue is quite good.

The tone of the film is an absolute mess. It can't decide if it wants to be a biting high school satire, laced in dark humour and some surreal dream like sequences (there's a bizarre scene in which McGowan engages in some foreplay with an ice lolly) or if it wants to be just another high school movie with the friendly cliches. It fails at being both but would probably have worked if it had chosen the former.

It is a disappointment that Jawbreaker isn't a lot better than it is. The components are there: the great turn from Rose McGowan, the interesting idea, the cool soundtrack and glimpses of a good script showing throughout but in execution someone has just got it all wrong and it's a bit of a train wreck.