---

Jawbreaker (1999), written and directed by Darren Stein, opens with a birthday surprise nobody but movie characters could think of. Dressed as ski-masked kidnappers, the best friends of a newly 17-year-old girl home alone for the week break into her house one morning and stuff her into a car trunk, stifling her screams by cramming a jawbreaker into her soon-to-be taped-shut mouth. The prank isn’t supposed to go further than that — the friends plan to open the trunk, take off their disguises, and reveal their edgy deception before going out for breakfast — but, not surprisingly, it does. The prankee, amazingly named Liz Purr (Charlotte Ayanna) and beloved like Princess Diana at school, chokes to death.

Courtney (Rose McGowan), the friend group’s de-facto leader — and also the one who thought it wasn’t stupid to use a jawbreaker as a silencing device — isn’t remorseful. She uses ultimately good intentions to excuse her lack of guilt. Before she and her friends can process the accidental death, she’s plotting the cover-up. Perhaps they could throw Liz back on her bed and make it seem like a kinky one-night stand gone awry? Marcie (Julie Benz), a bubble-headed blonde born to follow, goes along with it after some initial panic. Julie (Rebecca Gayheart), the most levelheaded in the group next to the ostensibly thoughtful and kind Liz, hesitantly sticks around for a little while before distancing herself entirely, pondering whether she ought to go to the police while finding solace among the goths.

Julie is effectively “replaced” by Fern (Judy Greer), a wallflower with a big crush on Liz practically nobody at school knows the name of. Fern happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and overhears just enough to know that Liz’s premature death is the fault of her one-time friends. Knowing she can buy Fern’s silence by giving her a potent dose of slippery popularity, Courtney gives her new recruit a makeover — she most eye-catchingly chops her mousy brown mane into short and rippling Marilyn-esque waves — and a new name: Vylette. Why be a plant when you could be a flower?

Julie Benz, Rose McGowan, and Judy Greer in Jawbreaker.

Jawbreaker struggles to figure out what to do with its premise after that. It waits, rather listlessly, to detonate two ticking narrative time bombs. It’s inevitable that the reborn Vylette realizes that she might be unsatisfied effectively selling her soul for the sake of social acceptance after all. It’s inevitable, too, that Julie will let her conscience win and go to the cops. (Her new conscientiousness is sartorially suggested by her sudden fondness for down-home denim.) Julie’s particular redemption arc is encouraged by a morally sound love interest — a school theater star played by Chad Christ — whose shaggy-haired handsomeness makes a half-baked romantic subplot more bearable to watch.

Jawbreaker is obviously inspired by 1989’s Heathers. In common are their persistent mean-spiritedness, pastel-pretty aesthetics, and the gall to nearly immediately kill off the school’s queen bee. But Jawbreaker doesn’t have an iota of its spiritual predecessor’s mordant wit, mistaking endless snottiness — particularly as it’s delivered by McGowan, who’s good at playing people whose tongues are soaked with venom — for comedy. These are girls obviously written by a not particularly funny gay man who conceives of them largely as bold and beautiful vessels for high-school divadom, their senses of self only Bratz-doll-notional.

Jawbreaker is entertaining mostly because of McGowan, who here foreruns Regina George as a raven-haired vamp charismatic enough to even convince her macho football-hunk boyfriend to fellate a popsicle. There’s also its candy-colored costuming and set design, and the rare flashes where the humor most efficiently matches the high-school-is-hell-darkness of the premise. (A scene at lunchtime where Courtney explains bleak friend-group rules — which include not eating during lunch — to Vylette is one prime example.) But the movie only pales in comparison not just to its primary inspiration, but also Clueless (1995) and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), that decade’s unequivocal high points of teen comedy. Those films had laughs and perceptiveness to spare. Jawbreaker is the kind to talk a lot without saying much.