It is also extremely well-written in the fearless way of a smarty pants on a roll in the university cafeteria.

This is a very funny film about a creepy, excruciatingly lonely world.

An obscene, misanthropic go-for-broke satire, Pretty Persuasion is so gleefully nasty that the fact that it was even made and released is astonishing. Much of it is also extremely funny.

It's too bad that the satire is not more pointed, because Pretty Persuasion is outrageously funny in short blasts, mainly thanks to James Woods at his most gleefully depraved.

The comedy is brutal and paper thin, but that is less bothersome than the ending of the movie, which abruptly changes its tone.

There is such a thoroughgoing nastiness to the plot and dialogue that the film almost achieves a level of buoyancy.

A teenie "To Die For" whose flaws are superceded by a complex, compelling turn from Evan Rachel Wood.

In a star-making performance, Evan Rachel Wood stars as essentially a younger version of Nicole Kidman's media-age femme fatale from "To Die For," an aspiring 15-year-old actress who hides a sharp, calculating mind behind a façade of vapid, chattering self-absorption.

Kills itself with unrestrained negativism, but almost resuscitates itself with some great comedy.

So exploitative and misogynistic that its last-minute dramatic turns and pleas for tolerance and understanding come off as manipulative as its heroine.

If the resulting film doesn't work equally well at all levels, Wood (who starred in "Thirteen") gives an astonishing performance that pushes it most of the way there.

Ms. Wood, who made a potent impression two years ago as a naïve adolescent led astray by a sophisticated and psychotic classmate in "Thirteen," has the whip hand this time around -- and she's wonderfully persuasive. She needs a movie to match.

So the movie is daring, and well-acted. Yet it isn't very satisfying, because the serious content keeps breaking through the soggy plot intended to contain it.

Tries to be an audacious, irreverent satire about youth culture like "Lord Love a Duck," but most of the laughs get strangled at birth by the uncertainty of Siega's tone.