What I really like about this movie was the acting and the writing and that it is a very complex satire. The first half of the movie has so much promise in it but than it starts to get too wrapped up in cliches and loses the witty archetypes that it was playing with. I am really tired of movies that present young women as manipulative and self involved and not looking at possible reasons for this, it always just seems to be this is how it is. I don’t understand how this is always seemingly so fatal. For being so clever they never have an epiphany of how unhappy they are until they are too far deep to fix it and than they just cry but they can’t fix anything. I love that on the blackboard during a scene there is the definition of satire written out. but it is framed that you only see the definition. I really like a lot of shots and the framing of them and that was another great part of this movie. I just wished that the ending could have been more hopefully and I think the role of the teachers, although, to me they were blatantly creeps could have been stronger because I as reading on some message boards how people thought they were innocent. But part of the story was the power structure and though these young women had taken away some of their power by making them feel old and impotent and worthless they still responded to this very unprofessionally and the scenes of the teacher with his wife I think clearly demonstrate that his guilt is implicit. At the end of the day no one was innocent. Which was a a complex motif to undertake and explains why the film is rather convoluted at time and easily misinterpreted.

Oh, don’t you just hate her (character, I mean :-P)? Evan Rachael Wood is definitely one of the most respected young actresses of the day. Love her!

There’s nothing new about the story of teenage girls using their power to destroy a teacher with false sexual harrassment claims. But this movie takes it to new places worth going. It’s an extremely dark portrait of a brilliant and driven young woman willing to do anything to get what she wants. The stories of her two cohorts are also worth consideration.
The movie is multi-layered and complex, yet holds together solidly with no visible cracks. If you like dark comedies then I highly recommend this movie.