The process by which an ordinary kid becomes a soldier has been portrayed so often that it's hard to imagine boot-camp life coming as much of a surprise to new recruits. Stateside writer-director Reverge Anselmo doesn't avoid the accumulated clichés of boot-camp movies, but he does bring a refreshing efficiency to showing how a trouble-plagued rich kid (Jonathan Tucker) struggles through initiation into the Marines under the command of a hard-nosed drill sergeant played by a shudder-inducing Val Kilmer. Told to come to attention while scuttling across a rope, Tucker falls into the water below, at which point Kilmer rebukes him for getting wet. This not being Full Metal Jacket, it's not hard to figure out that the film will eventually reveal the kind impulses behind Kilmer's cruelty, but when it does, that's nicely handled, as well. Unfortunately, this well-executed sequence has little to do with the movie surrounding it—and the movie surrounding it is a mess.
Set in the early '80s, Stateside co-stars Rachael Leigh Cook as an actress/rock star struggling with schizophrenia. When not storming off film sets, she's interrupting concerts with bizarre rants about how the part of Jell-O that makes it jiggle is actually alive. This prompts one literal-minded heckler to shout, "She's mentally ill!" Soon afterwards, Cook is in a mental hospital, presumably after receiving a more professional diagnosis. There, she meets Tucker, and the two begin an unlikely romance.
The young lovers seem confused by their emotions, but not half as confused as the film. There's no real shape to their affair, and as a character study, it's half a disaster. Tucker's fine, but Cook, while an ebullient presence in movies like Josie And The Pussycats, should probably strike this one from her résumé. Always looking as if she's just stepped out of the makeup-and-hair trailer, she behaves like she's playing Ophelia in a hastily assembled touring production of Hamlet. And, in a final bit of madness, Stateside ends with what's either a tacked-on ending or an unsuccessful attempt at elliptical storytelling. Either way, it's difficult to care.