The movie concerns a young couple, played by Alicia Silverstone and Jared Leto, who live in the 1950's. They got married fresh out of high school and had a kid long before they knew what they were getting into. Not having experienced life in any meaningful way, they are not prepared for the twists and turns life throws their way. After showing their wedding, the movie fast forwards to a year later where the couple is at each others throats as he tries to advance at work and she suffers from post-partum depression. With the mounting pressure on each of them, they turn start cheating on each other, he with a co-worker that seems glamorous and her with a smooth hoodlum type that seems exciting. Needless to say, things don't turn out all that well for either of them in this depressingly weak movie.

The acting wasn't any worse than any daytime soap opera but the script was all over the place. Bakshi was also credited as the writer so I was left thinking maybe he had a personal experience that was similar, and if so, he was way too close to the material. None of the characters were sympathetic and the story had plot holes you could drive a truck through. I was left with the feeling that there was no rhyme or reason to the events as displayed which is a shame since the cast has all gone onto bigger and better things. Had this movie been more aggressively marketed, I doubt that Silverstone would've been cast in her breakthrough hit Clueless-yes, it was that bad.

So if the acting and story weren't very exceptional, what about the rest of the aspects of the movie. Sadly, the themes of pregnancy and youthful indiscretion were handled in such a clumsy manner that had Bakshi made a better effort at tying them into a more "real" character and not the two dimensional poster children for stupidity used here, the movie might have easily been a lot better. When you don't care about the characters, you don't care how lousy their lives are and usually end up learning nothing from them.

The movie is easily worth a rating of Skip It based as much on the technical limitations as on the poor story, lack of direction, and other problems on display here. At a time when animation/anime of all sorts is flourishing all over the world, why is it that one of the earlier directors of such material chose to abandon it in favor of a genre he seems to know so little about? I just hope someone makes him an offer to return to his roots since his other efforts are not all that great, of, in the case of Cool And The Crazy.

Picture: The picture was presented in 1.33:1 ratio full frame color. The colors were off, there were artifacts and there seemed to be a soft focus to the whole show. Even though the movie is 9 years old, it should've looked better.

Sound: The sound was presented in Dolby Digital stereo English with option captions for the hearing impaired. The vocals were a bit hollow and the music track was fairly decent, if a bit distorted at times. I didn't notice much separation between the audio channels.

Extras: 4 trailers and no insert

Final Thoughts: I suppose fans of Silverstone or the rest of the cast might want to see this early effort but I can't think of anything truly positive to say about it. Technical limitations, story weakness, and even barely passable acting all combined to make this one a movie to avoid. Having watched the movie twice (yeah, I did it for you readers), I wondered where the advertised "you're in for a wildly entertaining treat!" was.