Tart (Widescreen) [Import]

I like granny smith apples. I like lemons. When I was a little kid I used to like to eat lots of sweet tarts. There's something pleasurable of puckering up my lips after eating something very tart. That's why it saddens me to say that I HATE TART. What a horribly bad film!

What happened to Dominique Swain? After turns in the big budget FACE/OFF and then the provocative if flawed LOLITA, I think she decided to make only straight to video films. In TART she plays Kat Storm, a middle class girl in a rich man's world. She hates her mother (Alberta Watson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) her little brother (Myles Jeffrey, FACE/OFF) is a hypochondriac. Her family used to be wealthy Park Avenue residents, then her parents got divorced. Kat's father (Michael Murphy) a restaurateur has hit hard times. So to make this subtle point, just about every time we see her front door, repo-men are taking something out.

Kat attends a high-class private school for girls. After her best friend Delilah (Bijou Phillips, Black and White) is kicked out of school for drugs. Kat makes some new friends, she falls for William (Brad Renfro, Bully) a nice guy with a troubled family and then she realizes it's all a sham. Her friends suck, William is a drug addict and his dad beats his mom. Kat want to fix everything, so she runs off to the Hamptons. That's when the film crashes to it conclusion, I never would have guessed what was gonna happen, but by the end didn't care.

First time director Christina Wayne tries very hard to make an interesting film. Too bad it fails miserably. Everything feels forced. The film re-emphasizes points it has already made enough, and then leaves guessing on plot ideas that seem much more important. But maybe they only seem important because we as an audience are confused about them. It also has one of the most pointless voice-overs in film history, and uses every film-school cliché in the book.

This 90-minute film is so clunky it feels longer than that. It present characters whom start to grate on you. Maybe it's because the story is so mundane. Maybe because the screenplay hasn't found that balance of character development, and plot structure. The film doesn't work.

The only bright spot in this film is Lacey Chabert (Party of Five) who's character is the one with a little dimension. You actually feel bad for her, and yet she keeps her dignity. Too, bad the movie didn't give us more from her.

I'd stay away from TART.

This must be the worst movie I have ever seen. And I've seen a fair amount of bad movies. Every single relationship or situation was completely unrealistic and was made even more excruciating by some of the worst lines and worst deliveries I HAVE EVER SEEN. The premise: rich, popular kids get caught up in drugs, sex, and even worse (the "worse" is clearly given away in the trailer), and the main character, Cat, gets dragged into the mess because of her desire to fit in. Being a teenager living in an affluent community, I thought it would be amusing to watch this- possibly even relateable although understandably exagerated. Yes, drugs, sex, and family problems abound in these communities, so I could see where the premise came from... But everything about the movie was so completely horrendous and unrealistic and the acting was so horrible that I would rather watch Cruel Intentions for the 30th time then see this. I can't believe I just wasted 91 minutes on this movie. It doesn't deserve to be called a movie-- In fact I am so mad that I wasted so much time on this that I was compelled to waste even more time to write this review. I hope my huge waste of time was not for nothing and that someone will read this and decide to boycott this horrendous movie. Spread the word..... THIS MOVIE [STINKS].

The concept of the movie was intelligent, but the concept was wasted on horrible acting and not a very good script or well enough developed plot. I rented the movie because Mischa Barton was in it, and it looked like it was interesting. Well, there's a reason this movie isn't all that widely known. I wish the concept was saved for good actors and a good script who could've made the movie really hit home. It is a movie people can relate to, and it is good in a satirical sense - but if the creators were not trying to make a satire, wow it sucks more than i thought. Teenage girls can relate because it's a movie about finding yourself, but it could've been done in a much better way.