My wife told me this was a classic, but then confessed that she "probably hadn't seen it all the way through" which is annoying because she's been saying "I want my two dollars" to me for 22 years.

This is a pretty insubstantial teen comedy, fairly gentle compared to other genre films. John Cusack is plenty cute and charming, and his romantic interest steals a few scenes, but everyone else ranges from "unpleasant" to "abhorrent" and so it's unfortunate that…

This, for me, was a frustrating lesson in admiring a film without really liking it. There are some hugely fascinating ideas in the movie, but they don't do nearly enough to offset how bored and insulted I felt during the rest of the runtime. There are, likewise, a couple of really dazzling setpieces, but I had difficulty reconciling that with some other awfully cheap-looking aesthetic touches. This film is going for something really ambitious, but the end result is sort…