She’s Too Young (aka “Teen Sex”)
“To fit In, you’ve gotta put out”
Directed by Tom McLoughlin
Written by Richard Kletter
Produced by Jaffe/Braunstein Films Ltd.
Notable Cast:
Marcia Gay Harden as Trish Vogul
Alexis Dziena as Hannah Vogul
Mike Erwin as Nick
Miriam McDonald as Dawn
Megan Park as Becca White
Rating: TV-14
Genre: Drama
Release Date: February 16, 2004
Runtime: USA: 120 mins (including commercials)
Country: USA
Language: English
Color
I wasn’t able to obtain a script of this movie anywhere on the internet, so some quotes may not be word-for-word. I just finished seeing it in my High School Health class earlier today, I feel that it was a decent movie and deserves to be noded before it forever slips out of my mind.
The story is about Hannah Vogul, a 14-year-old suburban overachiever moving into a new town and attending a public High School as a freshman. Both of her parents hold big positions in large corporations, so she has all the latest toys and is well-off financially. In her spare time, she practices cello and hangs out with her friends. The town looks quiet and peaceful on the outside, but there are some wild things happening in High School.
One evening, the most popular guy in school, Nick, asks her out on a date to one of the parties. Nick is a 16-year-old junior whose parents are rich. He has all the latest toys: a “cool” computer (probably a Dell), a cellphone, a car with neon lighting and the extremely loud stereo that never shuts off, and an unlimited use of his dad’s American Express credit card. He is also smart, athletic, attractive, and had sex with almost every girl in the school. Not wanting to be unpopular, she gladly accepts. His parents are at work or on business trips all the time, so his house is always empty (how convenient).
She ends up giving him head on their second date and things just start going downhill from there. First, one of the girls discovers that she got syphilis and admits to having slept with over 20 boys. Knowing that syphilis is an extremely contagious disease, the school immediately contacts the 20 individuals only to discover that each one also had multiple sex partners. Eventually, they discover that pretty much everybody fucked everybody else, except for Hannah, who only did it with Nick, and that the majority of the school is infected with syphilis.
For no apparent reason (aside from blatantly stating the lesson of the movie), Hannah goes to her girl friend’s house, they get drunk, and talk about sex. Her friend, the biggest school slut, says that due to all the competition, the only way to get a date is to offer sexual services. They have a long talk about role of sex in their lives and in the end accept it as a normal and inevitable thing. Her friend even jokes about putting “school slut” on her college application. The scene ends when the girl’s mother comes home and finds Hannah puking over a toilet bowl and her daughter passed out on the couch.
Hannah’s mother, infuriated and astonished by the apathy of teenagers about the fact that they all have a highly contagious STD, goes on a one-person crusade to try and organize an educational meeting for all the adults on how to protect their kids from STDs. She very soon finds herself disliked by the whole town, and many people don’t listen to her. One fanatical Christian mother refuses to talk about sex in public; another parent completely denies the fact that her daughter has the disease; Nick’s mother is completely indifferent and says that Nick should learn to use a condom. What’s worse is that Hannah is now hated by all the teens and gets harassed, insulted, and threatened everywhere she goes.
In the end, everybody gets cured (it only takes one shot of vaccine to cure syphilis in its early stages), but some people continue to have uncontrolled sex. Hannah tries to fuck her dork friend, who’s probably the only one not affected by syphilis, for no apparent reason, but finally learns her lesson after she ends up nearly getting raped at a party. Another girl gets sent to an all-girl school, but has sex with two guys “for the last time”. A party is organized where everybody has sex, and some idiots actually form a “syphilis club”. This only goes to show the stupidity of teenagers and how their feeling of invincibility can lead to disasters.
Although this movie may seem very unrealistic, there was apparently a very similar incident in Rockdale County, Georgia in 1966 where over 200 school kids got syphilis.
In some parts, this movie features some of the worst script, some of it unintentionally funny. The first thing one should notice is the fact that teens NEVER communicate via regular phones. The casual chatter is conducted over cellular phones, the more important scenes are done through cellular phone text messaging, and the moral lessons are expressed using instant messaging services. Nick is definitely the best character in the story, occasionally surprising the viewers with cool out-of-nowhere quotes like “You might as well stick ‘em all, ‘cuz I know I did” (to a vaccinator, referring to all the girls in the school) and “You can tell other people…this will totally boost your reputation” (to Hannah after she gave him a blow job). Of course, Hannah shines as well, with the best quote in the movie: “You wanted me to be the perfect child, well I blew it!” (the pun was most likely not intended) IM conversations feature screen names such as “bekka69” and messages such as “hey grrl!” and “4get him, u r 2 good 4 him” (sent by a guy!) Finally, the lyrics “Take it off! Take it all off!” are used a lot during the movie as background rap music. I wish I could find the artist of the song, but Lifetime chose not to credit its sources, and there are so many rap and vocal versions of “Take it off” that I gave up trying after ten; I hope you can forgive me.
Despite all its flaws, this is, without a doubt, a shocking view on the teenage world and the problems they have to face with. I recommend this movie to anybody in the age group. Don’t worry about the imagery; the movie manages to be very inexplicit, employing clever angle shifts, cover-ups, and implications to block all the inappropriate content while still getting the point across.
http://www.imdb.com/
http://www.movietome.com/
http://www.lifetimetv.com/movies/info/move3522.html