She's Too Young

In elementary school, communicable diseases worthy of a parent-teacher-kid trifecta freakout usually fall into several categories: itchy (chicken pox), insect (lice), or vomitrocious (flu).

In this high school, it was an epidemic of a different nature.
If you're thinking "syphilis?", you're right!

Fourteen year old freshman Hannah Vogul (a cute, but vaguely piggy Alexis Dziena) is running with a fast crowd. Her friends (one of whom is played by Degrassi alum Miriam McDonald), are into some pretty heavy stuff. Yep, I'm talking about orgies.

It all starts out innocently enough when Hannah goes out with the school Studly Dudley, Nick (a profoundly dopey Mike Erwin II). He invites her over, gets her clothes off, joins her in the hot tub and reminds her that he's not just about sex. Hannah is over the moon about this guy even though a couple of her friends have already had the pleasure of "doing" him. She's different! He "really likes her"! He gave her a stupid present and chastely watched movies with her at his house!

At this point, the movie is pretty much 100% realism. The girl looks and acts 14, the boy...well, he seems as quietly predatory as older boys are at that age. He is nothing like her boy-buddy, who is so nondescript that I have forgotten his name. That boy is a dork and is not orgy material.

Ok, so Nick puts the moves on Hannah and she says that she's not ready. He gives her the old boo hoo blue balls look and she gives in. It's quick and unreciprocal oral sex for this helpless naif. She doesn't seem to enjoy it much. She sure doesn't know that she just got the uncoolest present of all: syphilis.

The movie moves forward at a breakneck pace at this point. All of Hannah's friends are totally into doing as many guys as they can and so they all get syphilis. Hundreds of people in her school are screened, hundreds receive an antibiotic shot. There is a kindly social worker type who is trying to chart the spread of the syph on a whiteboard. She is coming up against a lot of resistance from the administration and parents who refuse to believe that their kids are sexually active. The girls have conflicts with their mothers, who all fall into different motherly stereotypes (the young-and-lenient, the overly religious, the PTA demon.)

In the meantime, the dork maintains his ardent love for Hannah and eventually uses his annoying cellphone camera to save the day. Wonder how this happens? You'll just have to see the movie.

I give this at least 6 points just for dealing with the unseemly topic of a syphilis epidemic in such an unusually realistic way. -1 for the dork, because most girls who give it up like Hannah don't wind up with such a nice dude, at least not right away. + 1 for indignant Marcia Gay Harden, who humiliates her daughter by holding her up as an example. Who wants a mom who makes YOU the poster child for VD?!?! +1 for being the kind of movie you could accidentally put on and watch with your teenage daughter to segue into a very important talk about not dating jerks.

Overall, I think this movie deserves an 8. I enjoyed it for its frank depiction of teenage orgies as well as their consequences.

Rating: 8.

Here's a video with clips from the movie set to a Pink song. I don't get it, but maybe you will.
A youtube commenter had this to say: "i love this movie its soo cool and also the guys sooo hot even wehn he sais I HAVE SYPHILIS UHH AHHH SYPHILIS SYPHILIS! "