Jawbreaker

By RICHARD CORLISS

One of Reagan High's coolest coeds dies swallowing a candy jawbreaker. To cover up this gaffe, bitch-on-heels Courtney (Rose McGowan, below, right) tries turning a geekette who knows about the death (Judy Evans Greer) into a fox goddess. A teen twist on the old Frankenstein-Pygmalion plot is as familiar as last week, when it was called She's All That. (And a decade ago, it was the evil-teen classic Heathers.) Writer-director Stein flirts with black humor but, alas, never goes all the way. As for McGowan, she has the buxom wantoness and smartly cruel mouth to be a retro indie pinup, but if she doesn't choose her films more wisely, she'll end up as a perpetual gonna-be.

--R.C.