Friday, July 6, 2012

Crazy Eyes

The indie boozefest “Crazy Eyes” is bargain-basement Bukowski, the nearly plotless exploits of several hard-drinking young Angelenos who complain of various emotional afflictions but whose real problem my Bryn Mawr friend Patty Gadicke would rightly have pegged as a vague sense of ennui. Their behavior grows ever more repellent in its louche decadence, and they with it.


The movie posits Lukas Haas as Zach, a well-endowed (in all senses) Hollywood Hills trust fund baby already playing out the string, leaving voicemails for the myriad hot babes in his contact list but spending most nights bending the ear of his bartender buddy, Dan (Jake Busey), with whom he shares women as well as rum and coke (the powdery kind). Everything changes when he espies Rebecca (Madeline Zima), whom he dubs “Crazy Eyes” (a nickname he repeats one or two dozen times). She goes everywhere with him and does everything – except sex. We are to believe that Zach finds Rebecca irresistible and infinitely charming; I found her to be an exasperating, irredeemable cocktease. (Those eyes aren’t crazy, just vacant, and there’s nothing going on behind them, either.)

Here is a movie set in Los Angeles that not only purports to hate the city but manifests that sentiment by looking as if it could have been made in Providence. Haas is surprisingly appealing and shows himself capable of serious adult roles, but Zima does nothing for me, and Busey never comes off as more than a juicehead. “Crazy Eyes” goes nowhere and, even at 95 minutes, takes its time getting there.

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