Something like a Larry Clark movie produced by YM magazine, Normal Adolescent Behavior raises more than a few potentially provocative issues, only to be done in by its slick, pretentious, cell-phone-ad style and some utterly disingenuous teen dialogue. Amber Tamblyn is an interesting performer with a knack for choosing unconventional material, but here her instincts fail her. Once she and her friends are established as an idyllic bunch of free-love martyrs, there's little brought to the table emotionally or intellectually, and we steel ourselves for the inevitable jocks-versus-misfits conflict. And the movie skirts the very issue it sets out to tackle, shooting these teens in relatively chaste, gauzy, soft-focus eroticism. For a film that's about shattering taboos, Normal Adolescent Behavior is crushingly safe and conventional.
