The film stars Evan Rachel Wood of Thirteen as a backstabbing teen-actress clawing her way through rich kid flesh at the Beverly Hills High now seen in your lazy screen-writing dreams. Wood and her two friends accuse their English professor, played by the always-slick Ron Livingston, of sexual harassment. The crudest, funniest moments come compliments of Wood’s father, a memorable sleaze pool of a character for James Woods to drop anchor. Scenes more scoffed-at and debated by critics are the ones between Wood and her two fellow accomplices, a rich girl and a Middle Eastern exchange student-with Wood and the former being Cali bitches eager to teach the [insert racist slur and snooze] about American life via Twinkies, cigars, and porn.

Pretty Persuasion is a crafty and catty film made from a promising but not stellar script by newcomer Skander Halim. Its writing and structure draw aforementioned comparisons to the teen-shockers above, but still possess more left-field dialogue daggers than Saved! and swing an intelligent depth not seen in a two-hour-trailer like The Ringer. Still virgin-director Marcos Siega, despite publicized babble decrying all mainstream sacrifice, makes a few obvious safe snips and ducks. And hey, now dude’s making Nick Cannon movies, so it’s bye bye to this guy.

Here though, Siega oversees a premeditated bland, dire and flat look, reminiscent of Todd Solondz on Xanax. This stylistic choice punctuates the mundane lives these characters lead-forbidden teen-sex that longtime k-hole for desperate normalcy-but the laugh-track mathematics of the film’s score and any middling-preview-audience-scores probably crescendoed to alleviate any stark artistic commentary that existed. The cast came to play however. Aside from Wood, Livingston, and Woods, who grasp the material with devilish zeal, the film features Selma Blair, Danny Comden (Sol Goode), Alex Desert (Swingers), Jane Krakowski (Alfie), and Jaime King (Sin City)-all surprisingly invested. Obviously, Siega seem to be a simmering H-town player with connecs.

During its theatrical release, Pretty Persuasion faced half-threats of detention instead of the full-on MPAA expulsion for Middle-Eastern-cum-Lolita-rah-rahing it had hoped would snowball. But its new low-key positioning on DVD is part of its purpose: another dark-teen-comedy that muscles a few mischievous grins past and at the expense of the rest of Middle America isn’t a bad thing, it’s like ironic Triple-X playing cards and is worth a look.

-Shawn Wines