No 'Legend' This Fall Season: Bland and Brainless

There are all sorts of good reasons why we go to the movies.

Catharsis, self-improvement, escapism, ignorance...but if you are going willingly to watch Urban Legend, the latest teen scream flick to hit the shallow-entertainment market, here are some suggestions for what to say when others ask you why on earth you did so.

You could say, "Well, I lack imagination, and have no appreciation for the value of a plot." The achievement of Urban Legend is that it gives you the visuals to go with all those stories you've heard before, because, God knows, we no longer have the brainpower to see stories in our heads anymore. Stories like the infamous kidney heist, or the familiar axe-murderer in the backseat of the car, are incarnated on film for the weak-at-mind. It's a film where everyone can be the loud-mouthed ass to cry, "I know what happens next!"

Even the basket premise which knots these urban legends together is remarkably unoriginal. When a string of violent and bizarre murders occur on the campus of Pendleton College, spunky and independent student Natalie (Alicia Witt) realizes that a psychopath has decided to turn urban legends into reality. Her friends are all predictably skeptical, and consequently go on to die in ways corresponding to how nasty they have been. There is your slutty girl, your practical joker, your loyal best friend, not to mention the lone dean, soul security officer and only janitor--it's like a morality play, except without morals. Or charm, or wit.

Along the way, everybody falls off the script, dead and gutted, so that you are basically left with two suspects between whom you may choose your culprit. The suspense is weaker than baby shampoo. Unless you are stripped of imagination, you will find that you have solved the film long before the end, and get frustrated by the spunky and independent student as she plods dumbly through the conclusion.

On top of that, you could add, "Given that this is a horror film, I really would like to see mild violence and uncreative forms of slaughter." I'll tell you, although you know them already: there's a drive-by hanging, an in-bed strangulation, an over-the-radio death chase. The camera makes the requisite turns around corners, blood flies freely, but your adrenalin will get pumping only if you are an undemanding horror fan.

More than anything, the attempts at excitement in Urban Legend are frustratingly defeated for any thinking person. How does the lone serial killer move all the bodies to the same place without help and within the space of several frames? How much space is there in a car anyway to let you really swing an axe with any decent momentum behind it?

Finally, you could say, "Heck, I just want to see babes in sleepwear fleeing psychos with phallic weapons." That is the only good reason so far, but it is also met with disappointment. Alicia Witt and Joshua Jackson escape the TV-dom of "Cybil" and "Dawson's Creek" for far less imaginative roles on the big screen, joined by the fairly beautiful Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart and Michael Rosenbaum. Oh, the men are definitely hot (who cares if their characters are completely flat?). Pacey from "Dawson's Creek" especially, with his bleached hair, makes me--happy.

For male viewers, however, the fashion in this film is strictly fall season, all long pants and sweaters and coats, which is a flagrant rejection of the first rule of the teen scream genre. The producers make a lame tribute to their audience's hormones with a barely genial swimming pool and party scenes that let bikinis and low-cut party dresses make a necessary appearance.

Urban Legend does well to follow the success route of Scream and I know What You Did Last Summer by sourcing TV shows for its cast. However, the star quality in this film is still lamentably low. Should a sequel worm its way out of this, it will look even worse because all the better-looking characters have already been slain. Witt, whose heroine I have called spunky and independent as a euphemism for the only girl on campus without a sex life, has eyes of stone in a pinched face. She should have been killed long ago for not having a clue. But she lives and she gets the guy, which you already know too.

In the film, somebody says to somebody (it doesn't matter who; they are all forgettable), "The idea of an urban legend serial killer...eh...it's a stretch." A movie about that idea is enough to snap the band.