Jawbreaker Movie Review

Try as we will to forget, we all remember middle school. We all remember how much our own life felt like it resembled Welcome to the Dollhouse. We remember the insults. We remember the fights. We remember being the spectator to a catfight.

Watching Jawbreaker, in that respect, could be called a nostalgia film.

Of course, nostalgia implies that you actually want to think back to the times you watched a catfight in Middle School. If you don’t want to view an hour-and-a-half long catfight, Jawbreaker is a definite no.

If this blatant warning doesn’t tell you enough, and you have insisted upon listening to the reasons why Jawbreaker is not worth the trip to the video store, then allow me to continue.

Guys, for all of our lesbian fantasies that spring from seeing a catfight, the fact of the matter is that fantasy is the only level where sex has any appeal in this film. Rose McGowan, who almost kept The Doom Generation alive with her perky… sexuality, fails to excite at all. She has two scenes where she uses her… assets… and one scene is with Marilyn Manson and the other one involves an Icee. Let’s face it: the second one is clichéd and the first one is just plain odd.

McGowan, of course, plays the villain. She is the one who accidently kills a friend during their annual kidnapping prank (why they do said prank is beyond me). How does said friend die? By swallowing a jawbreaker. No, I’m not talking about those ones that were about a centimeter thick – I’m talking about the overdone two-inch thick ones that, by the way, I believe they stopped making by virtue of the fact that someone did choke to death on one.

When this event happens, the catfight kicks into high gear and the movie kicks into low intellect. Seeing as this happens in the first few minutes of the film, Jawbreaker never gives us much to go on. The IQ in this film is so low that, at one point, as discussing turns to making the death look like a rape and murder, the line “she could not scream, only savor the taste of a vanilla-coated death” comes up.

Please, spare us.

Jawbreaker is a catfight. It is a catfight in the fact that it is torturous and pitiful to watch. It is a catfight in the fact that it takes forever to be broken up. It is a catfight in the fact that it never has any resolution. However, it is also a catfight in the point of fact that you cannot look away… no matter how bad it gets.



Puss & boots.