Signing up Zack Gilford ("Friday Night Lights") and Emmy Rossum {'Shameless") to play a teenage Stanley and Blanche must've seemed like a real casting coup, but I'm thinking this film would've been better off with two younger, less charismatic stars—their characters are supposed to be slowly groping their way (in more ways than one) towards an adult identity, and these two seem like they're already fully formed. Still, their performances are the best thing about "Dare," which in spite of a promising storyline, still ends up feeling kind of unfocused and generic.
The unstable triad of high-school player Johnny (ZG), ambitious art girl Alexa (ER) and "drama-club tech nerd" Ben (Ashley Springer) shakes out pretty much the way you think it will, though the ending's a nice surprise, and the most convincing scenes are the ones where the three leads interact with other characters, not with each other—Johnny goes off on a boorish classmate and on his therapist; Ben tries hard to keep his mother (also a therapist) from "analyzing"; prim Alexa talks smack with her dissipated BF (Rooney Mara).
Excellent supporting cast—Cady Huffman turns up briefly as Alexa's pediatrician, Alan Cumming's a troublemaking HS alumnus and Johnny's therapist is Sandra Bernhard, no less; nice soundtrack and Philly Main Line locations (Johnny's absentee father has the perfect McMansion with lawyer foyer). "Dare"'s certainly not all that it might have been, but it's still quite watchable; turns up on cable a lot these days.
The unstable triad of high-school player Johnny (ZG), ambitious art girl Alexa (ER) and "drama-club tech nerd" Ben (Ashley Springer) shakes out pretty much the way you think it will, though the ending's a nice surprise, and the most convincing scenes are the ones where the three leads interact with other characters, not with each other—Johnny goes off on a boorish classmate and on his therapist; Ben tries hard to keep his mother (also a therapist) from "analyzing"; prim Alexa talks smack with her dissipated BF (Rooney Mara).
Excellent supporting cast—Cady Huffman turns up briefly as Alexa's pediatrician, Alan Cumming's a troublemaking HS alumnus and Johnny's therapist is Sandra Bernhard, no less; nice soundtrack and Philly Main Line locations (Johnny's absentee father has the perfect McMansion with lawyer foyer). "Dare"'s certainly not all that it might have been, but it's still quite watchable; turns up on cable a lot these days.