Here On Earth

Here On Earth

Ways for a young actor to sabotage a promising but fragile career: Appear in a film that has you drunkenly serenade several cows. Choose a project in which the most energetic moment requires you to bounce about while making breakfast to peppy musical accompaniment. Take a role that invites comparisons to Ali McGraw in Love Story. Tackle a character defined entirely by the habit of sporting unevenly cut bangs and a baseball cap. Or simply star in a movie so slow it seems to move through the projector at considerably fewer than 24 frames per second, and so emotionally flat that a Ben Stein cameo would be the equivalent of Roberto Benigni's role in Down By Law. Chris Klein (Election), Leelee Sobieski (A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries), and Josh Hartnett (The Virgin Suicides) fall victim to the above in Here On Earth, a dreadful tear-jerking teen romance as bereft of life as brains. Klein plays a snooty Massachusetts prep-school senior whose academic career ends in ignominy after he and some friends engage local kid Hartnett in a drag race that ends with Sobieski's family diner erupting in flames. Sentenced to rebuild it as part of their punishment, the frequently shirtless, immaculately coifed Klein and the less frequently shirtless, sloppy-haired Hartnett find themselves working side by side and half-heartedly vying for Sobieski's heart. But could her mysterious knee injury be something worse? It can, but by the time Here On Earth reveals her potentially tragic secret, it's far too late to make any difference and not enough to break any of the three leads of their habit of staring blankly and reciting their lines in sleepy, emotionless monotones. For anyone without an industrial-level tolerance for romantic sap, their boredom should prove infectious.

 
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