CHACE CRAWFORD IN TWELVE

Bad preppies

Twelve, Less Than Zero lite for teenagers, is enjoyable schlock about beautiful, spoiled, rich Manhattan kids at party time. Some have said the Gossip Girl star Chace Crawford is "painfully miscast" as the lead, White Mike, a bereaved preppy dropout drug dealer. Perhaps in the source novel by 17-year-old Nick McDonell White Mike is more dark and haunted, but so what? He's good-looking and young, and his TV series casting associates him with rich kids.

White Mike has recently lost his mother to cancer and has skipped his senior year. He does not smoke, drink, or do drugs; he only deals them. As he wanders all around town selling we're introduced to a wide range of preppy characters, their roomy apartments, their servants, and one or two parents (including Ellen Barkin). Most of the parents are on the Caribbean and can only be reached by satellite phone. Mike's father is in town but is a restaurant magnate who's distant. The story is narrated in a heavy, knowing voice-over by Kiefer Sutherland.

White Mike sells marijuana exclusively to Manhattan preppies, and it's vacation time when lots more of them are in town, Deerfield and Andover kids as well as Dalton and Trinity. On the scene there's a new drug called Twelve, which acts like a combo of blow and "X," sold by White Mike's dealer Lionel (50 Cent). Jessica (Emily Meade) gets hooked on Twelve immediately. She goes wild on it and her huge collection of teddy bears talk to her. A virgin, she offers her body to Lionel for more Twelve, which costs a thousand dollars for a tiny vial.

As the action gets going Mike's cousin is killed near a Harlem playground without Mike's knowledge and his best friend is picked up and held as a suspect. In this world everybody knows everybody and Chris (Rory Culkin), home alone, agrees to give a "famous party" for No. 1 preppy Alpha Girl Sara Ludlow (Esti Ginzburg) in hopes she'll help him lose his virginity. But his only partially recovered druggie big brother Claude (Billy Magnussen) turns up and causes mayhem. Burly blond Claude buys a samurai sword from Ako at a Chinatown dive shop and keeps waving it around up on the roof and weight-lifting, in case you might think he's too tame and mild to cause any trouble. For comic relief there are two pint-sized wigger boys, "Mark Rothko" (don't ask: Charlie Saxton) and Timmy (Erik Per Sullivan) squirreling around buying dope from White Mike and annoying the big teenagers. Because this is a comedy, as well as a soap-style melodrama.

White Mike is in limbo. Mawkish flashbacks show his childhood and his mom's last days. Phone calls show that he lies to best friend from childhood and would-be girl Molly (Emma Roberts, Julia's niece) to hide his illegal occupation. Everything comes to a head at the big party. Maybe if Mike survives all this, will he finish school and go to Harvard, an option seemingly open to any male character here who wants it? Maybe. People die (spoiler alert), but the pain doesn't go too deep and the movie manages to end on a hopeful note. Who cared about that Alpha Girl?

There's a bunch of other characters here, who aren't developed in any depth. Should they be? Could they ever have been? In a miniseries, perhaps. If you expect art or high seriousness from Joel Schumacher, who has a lousy track record and took a big pay cut after the disaster of Batman and Robin, you're in the wrong movie theater. But if you're looking for pretty people being spoiled in posh settings, you're right on track. The cinematography, like the actors, is good-looking.

As Variety said (this film debuted, not too successfully, at Sundance), Twelve "can't decide if it's a cautionary tale or a lifestyle catalog" and is "not quite self-aware enough to become camp," but as a Guilty Pleasure it works fine. Just don't expect too much. The servants are on duty, but the parents are away. Get it?

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.