Fun Review
In setting up a narrative structure that positions its central event --here, the senseless murder of an elderly woman by two teenaged girls -- in flashback, Fun offers the possibility to maybe understand why this ghastly crime was committed. After all, Bonnie and Hillary (brilliantly played by Alicia Witt and Renee Humphrey) are, as the film opens, in custody and are being questioned by a reporter (Williams R. Moses) and interviewed by a counselor (Leslie Hope). But the film won't take the easy way out; the reporter is interested in the story mainly for its gruesome details, and the counselor has her own emotional problems, which get in the way of her being an unbiased observer. Ultimately, it may be surmised that Bonnie and Hillary were each a case of damaged goods, but together they fed off their individual senses of betrayal, creating an Us-Against-the-World posture that led to the ultimate act of rejection. The film brilliantly shows the girls immediately testing each other to see how far they can push their sense of rebellion. (There is also an occasional hint of sexual attraction, which is another part of their experimenting.) Heavenly Creatures, in which the private world of two teens is even more imaginatively presented, may have stolen some thunder from Fun, but that shouldn't diminish its achievement as an exploration of adolescent angst and pathology. Tom Wiener, Rovi
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