The Crush

The worst elements of "Lolita" and "Fatal Attraction" are combined for "The Crush," an exploitative thriller that also harbors dangerous notions about and readily trivializes child neglect, sexual abuse and rape.

If that's not enough, the film is so ridiculous and so poorly conceived that it demonstrates Hollywood's insensitivity to serious social problems at its worst.

Cary Elwes (the laconic hero of "The Princess Bride," the cocky top gun of "Hot Shots!" and the bland suitor of "Bram Stoker's Dracula") is appropriately cast here as Nick, a good investigator but a hack writer who is hired by a tabloid magazine.

He's new in town but manages to find fancy, quiet digs in the form of a guest house on the expansive property of a wealthy couple (including veteran villain Kurtwood Smith, who seems to be having over-the-top fun) that is almost always out of town. Their 14-year-old daughter Darian (newcomer Alicia Silverstone), however, a genius and piano prodigy, is always home.

The opening scene has Nick driving up to the property and nearly running down Darian, who is rollerblading in the street. She pauses and we get a closeup of her peering seductively over her sunglasses, a nod to "Lolita" if ever there was one.

Darian begins coming on to Nick almost immediately and gets into the guest house when he's not around, mainly to build a candle-laden shrine to him in the basement. At one point, she gets into his computer and completely rewrites his first major magazine story — making it better! The boss highly compliments him. But later, when he spurns her overtures, Darian wipes out his followup story, sending Nick off to an editorial meeting with a blank disk. Upon realizing his story is gone, Nick races home, writes it up again from memory and gets it back to the office before the meeting is over!

My favorite dumb moment, however, is when Nick's photographer girlfriend Amy (Jennifer Rubin) goes into her darkroom, a shed outside her apartment. Darian shows up, padlocks the door from the outside and sends in a nest of wasps to attack Amy. The police rule it an accident!

The film's major structural problem, though, is our lack of sympathy for Nick, who does far too many dumb things. Initially receptive to Darian's seductive ways, he takes her for a drive late at night and accepts a big kiss, regularly ogles her as she rests outside his window in a bikini and even breaks into the main house and enters her bedroom, watching through a closet door as she undresses for a bath. By the time she starts getting lethal, the audience is likely to feel Nick deserves what he gets.

If it weren't so sleazy, "The Crush" might be laughably silly.

It's rated R, of course, for violence, profanity and nudity.