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Christina Ricci's ability to choose quality indie films is as spotty as Anna Nicole's vision when she stands up too quickly (i.e., Buffalo '66 and The Opposite of Sex vs. Desert Blue and The Man Who Cried). Like her most recent bomb, Pumpkin, Ricci also stars in and serves as producer for Prozac Nation, the screen adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's book Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. This bafflingly awful film is as likable as a sharp blow to the base of the skull, which I would recommend before even thinking of paying to see Nation.
Ultimately another opportunity for Ricci to show off her slimmed-down torso, Nation tells the real-life story of Wurtzel's horrible drug-induced Ivy League experience in the mid '80s. Lizzie's dad split when she was two, leaving her Jewish home as cracked as her mother Sarah (Jessica Lange, Titus) . Hoping to put the awful memories of divorce behind her, Lizzie channels her teenage energy into a journalism career and wins a scholarship to Harvard. Cambridge sees Lizzie land a boyfriend (Jason Biggs, American Pie 2), make quick friends with her roommate (Michelle Williams, Dawson's Creek) and land a freelance reviewing gig at Rolling Stone. Not bad for an 18-year-old, right?
Wrong. Instead of being satisfied with her good fortune, Lizzie becomes a needy, whiny, self-centered bitch and compulsive liar. She calls herself a "defective model," which apparently gives her carte blanche to sleep with her roommate's boyfriend (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Bend It Like Beckham), act like she's auditioning for The C-Word Spectacular, and ruin her mother financially by going through round after round of ineffective therapy with Anne Heche (John Q.). This is where the Prozac comes in, though by this point you'll wish Lizzie would just crawl in the bathtub and slash her wrists. Why should her suffering mean we have to suffer, too?
Thoroughly and completely irritating, Nation was filmed way back in 2000 and debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001, where it was immediately purchased by Miramax. They must have realized Ricci's Lizzie was as unsympathetic as characters come and promptly sat on it for 18 months. In addition to her exasperating performance on the screen, Ricci also provides a very clunky voiceover. As easy as she might be on the eyes, Ricci's is not a good voice for narration. It's hard to tell whether Lange's performance is decent or if it just looks good compared to Ricci's. I think Nation tries to make us think her Sarah is overbearing, but I felt much more for her than Lizzie.
Presumably the point of the film, and of Wurtzel's book, was to show the pitfalls of mood-altering presciption drugs. While that's an important issue, there isn't anything in Nation that The Simpsons didn't already cover much better and far more quickly in that episode where Bart gets hooked on Focusyn ("He's gone from Goofus to Gallant!"). Hopefully director Erik Skjoldbjærg, who wrote and directed the original Norwegian version of Insomnia, won't be held accountable for this mess. Nation should never have been made into a feature film. Maybe a Lifetime Network movie, but never a feature film.
1:39 - R for language, drug content, sexuality/nudity and some disturbing images
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