It eventually warms up and engages (when the older brother returns home), but this teen comedy has far more misses than hits.

The opening sequence: dramatic slow-mo of a one-on-one tennis match seems to be building to something, but ends simply with the opponent failing to return a serve. If that's the big intro hook that's supposed to draw us in, it certainly needs reworking.

Sadly, it foreshadowed other odd sequences that didn't quite add up to funny. I actually became intrigued as to the reasons for the miss. Perhaps there was a timing problem, perhaps, the editing could have used more punctuation. Or… perhaps the film needed some zippy sound effects or musical cues to help accentuate? I don't really know. Were the filmmakers going for a quirky "Malcolm in the Middle" offbeat sense of humor?

All that said, Larry Miller and Janeane Garofalo have always impressed me as comedic actors, they drew me to this film in the first place and I enjoyed their (albeit brief) performances/appearance.

-- Books by Author/Illustrator Ross Anthony --