Carlos Nuñez is a 17-year-old Mexican-American teen from East LA who rides a bus four hours every day to attend school in the Pacific Palisades for a better education. A straight-A student, he has ambitions of attending the U.S. Naval Academy and becoming a pilot. On a day out with friends at the Santa Monica Pier, he meets Nicole Oakley, a classmate who is doing trash pickup at the beach as part of a DUI sentence. She is the daughter of a US congressman and lives in the upscale Palisades, but she is rebellious, hard-partying, and has a strained relationship with her father. Her troubles stem from her mother's suicide when she was young, as well as the feeling of being unwanted by her father and his new wife. Despite their differences, Nicole and Carlos begin a relationship.
The romance runs into obstacles that arise from their different backgrounds, as when Carlos invites Nicole to a family party and she feels out-of-place as the only white person there. She pulls a stunt that lands Carlos in detention; and when she tells him to lighten up, he angrily points out that she doesn't appreciate the privileges she has. Despite the obstacles, their relationship blossoms. Carlos tries to steer Nicole away from her drug and alcohol abuse, and Nicole arranges a flying lesson for Carlos, who dreams of being a pilot but has never been in a plane.
Nicole's father offers to help Carlos with his Congressional sponsorship to the Naval Academy, but cautions against dating his daughter because he doesn't want to see Carlos dragged down by Nicole. Carlos's friends and family also look down on the relationship, fearing Nicole is a bad influence on him.
Feeling pressure from other peoples' expectations, Carlos breaks up with Nicole, sending her spiraling back into wild, drunken partying. One night, Carlos calls her and finds out she is getting drunk at a high school party. He goes to the party and saves her from a boy trying to take advantage of her. He drives her home, but they are stopped by the police.
As a result of this incident, Nicole's father and stepmother decide that she needs to go to a boarding school far from home. Carlos rescues Nicole and they run away together. While they are away, Nicole realizes she is obstructing Carlos's dreams, and decides it is time to face her problems so she can be better for Carlos and have a future with him. They return to her home, where she makes up with her father, who thanks Carlos for not listening to his advice to abandon Nicole. As the film ends, we see that Carlos has become a pilot with the United States Navy.
Crazy/Beautiful was directed by John Stockwell, who was interested in casting actress Kirsten Dunst as a self-destructive teenager after seeing her role in The Virgin Suicides.[3] Dunst accepted the role because she was tired of playing "sweet" girls.[3] She also helped Stockwell convince Disney executives not to tone down the film's language and adult themes.[3] Although a nude scene was in the script, it was never filmed because Dunst was 17 years old when she was cast and her mother flatly refused to let her appear nude.[4] The film was originally titled "At Seventeen".[5]
Due to an FCC warning to film studios for showing "unwholesome content [to] kids", Touchstone Pictures mandated significant edits to John Stockwell's final cut.[6] Though Crazy/Beautiful was planned as an R-rated film, in an effort to secure a commercial PG-13 rating, Disney ordered Stockwell to cut 35 obscenities, including a sex scene and scenes of Nicole drinking and using drugs.[6][7][8][9] Of the cuts, Stockwell said, "We were trying to make a cautionary tale, and we couldn't show the behavior we were trying to caution people away from.”[6]
Reception
Crazy/Beautiful opened at #9 at the U.S. box office, taking in $4,715,060 USD during its opening weekend. It eventually grossed a worldwide total of $19,937,988 on a $13 million budget.[2]Rotten Tomatoes gave it a score of 63% from 99 reviews. The critical consensus reads, "The story is not new, but the film gets credit for trying to move away from the genre's cliches. Kirsten Dunst and newcomer Jay Hernandez give believable performances".[10]Metacritic gave the film a score 61 based on 26 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[11]
The leads' acting was chiefly praised, with many critics saying it gave Dunst the opportunity to show her range as an actress.[12][13] In a three-star review, Roger Ebert wrote Crazy/Beautiful "is an unusually observant film about adolescence," and that Dunst and Hernandez bring "real conviction to the roles, [so] we care about them as people, not case studies."[14]
Stephanie Zacharek of Salon wrote, "[Dunst's] performance cuts deep...What’s so painful, and so moving, about her performance is that she's bracingly alive every minute. Her self-inflicted numbness is a defense against suffering, but not a solution to it. And when she looks into Carlos' eyes, she gives the sense of, momentarily at least, seeing her way clear.”[6] The Greensboro News & Record said Hernandez "manages to register such traits as honesty and integrity without being stuffy about it. That's not as easy as it might look."[9]
The film was also positively cited by critics for its handling of racial and cultural dynamics.[15] "This is a classic love story, but one that's not afraid to take a few jabs at the cluelessness of goodhearted liberals who, despite their admirable intentions, can never quite grasp how the other half lives," Zacharek wrote.[6]
The New York Times critic A. O. Scott praised the lead actors and the film's lively soundtrack, but criticized the writing of other characters as flat and superficial. He concluded that Crazy/Beautiful is "an enormous improvement over the brainless, patronizing teenage romances" of the time, but also said it could have been much better if the filmmakers "had trusted themselves and the actors a bit more".[16]
