Review: 'Twelve'

An unscientific study has confirmed that, the publicity around its recently published sequel notwithstanding, moviegoers of a certain age have never heard of "Less Than Zero." It is for those kids that "Twelve" was made.

Everyone else will likely view this new Joel Schumacher film as "Zero" with less charisma - a Very Special Episode of "Gossip Girl" in which repugnant rich kids do idiotic things with their lives.

Kiefer Sutherland, who wasn't in "Zero" but probably should have been, provides continuity with mid-'80s depravity as this film's narrator - simultaneously lending some Jack Bauer gravitas to a tissue-weight screenplay.

Just listen as Sutherland introduces a guy called "White Mike" as a "Very. Good. Drug dealer." Mike (Chace Crawford, of "Gossip Girl") went to school with the kids who now smoke his pot, but life took a dark turn when his mom's cancer treatments ate up the family's money. Now Mike lives in a crummy apartment away from Manhattan's posh Upper East Side pads, playing middleman between private-schoolers and dangerous characters like Lionel (50 Cent) while tending to his half-grown beard.

Mike's personal drama involves hiding his new career from a childhood sweetheart (Molly, played by Emma Roberts) so out of place in Mike's sleazy new world that the filmmakers actually once clothed her in a checkered blouse mimicking Dorothy's not-in-Kansas-anymore gingham. Can Molly maintain her innocence long enough to redeem Mike, or will she be corrupted at the big birthday bash thrown by the school's Wicked Witch-like popular girl?

Almost nobody here looks convincing as a high-school student - even as that teen subset whose looks are enhanced with all the surgery and cosmetic assistance money can buy. Rory Culkin is the only member of the core cast displaying anything like believable adolescent vulnerability, giving viewers a window through which we might identify with the action.

It's unfortunate for Culkin that the narrative building blocks around him ­- the pill-popping mom, 'roid-rage brother and popular girl willing to manipulate him with the promise of sex - are hackneyed stereotypes embodied so much better so many times before.