Thora Birch turns around in the closing shot of The Smokers and sticks her tongue out at the camera; short of adding a raspberry sound, we couldn't ask for a more pithy review of the film, even if Birch's gesture wasn't intended as such. (Whatever the case, it's a rather keen bit of fourth wall-breaking.) The Smokers is aimless, feckless, and finally bad, an indie made with an absence not only of cash but also vision, though the fact that it doesn't have any studio obligations leaves the filmmakers free to present complex female characters. Too bad they are that way in large part because their actions are so damn inexplicable.

Take the set-up for the story (please, to borrow from Henny Youngman): three kittenish boarding school townies--nicknamed as a trio The Smokers because, well, they smoke--go to a bar; two of them return home alone but the third and most promiscuous, Karen (Busy Philipps), gets it on with a rich man in a limousine. When the day breaks, he refuses to give Karen his number, fearing that a call from her might disrupt his marriage, and after that unpleasant experience she learns that her pal Lisa (Keri Lynn Pratt) was similarly left on the discard pile by a conqueror the same evening. Karen comes up with an asinine plan for The Smokers to "rape" a man at gunpoint, an act which will stand for Woman's reclamation of power, and the film's sharpest development is how this statement backfires: their victim becomes the envy of his guy friends, inspiring a "Rape Me" T-shirt fad across campus.

You think The Smokers is really onto something at this juncture, that it is brave enough to flesh out Karen's hypocrisy (she uses boys as much as they use her) as well as pick at the self-loathing behind the crime that she and her friends commit, but this dissipates into a parched subplot about Jefferson (the Lolita remake's Dominique Swain, still gangly and kinetic) learning to see a nerdy boy (Nicholas M. Loeb, whose co-producer credit explains his presence as an actor--he's so amateurish he elevates the student-crude 16mm cinematography and choppy editing) she grew up with in a new light. Karen continues her mission, yet director/co-writer Christina Peters seems too conflicted about the film's feminist advantage (when was the last time you saw a teen-themed picture with three female leads?) to expose The Smokers' emotional politics. Consequently, she glosses over so many of the errors in judgment that Karen makes that Karen becomes both mystifying and an object of sanctimony--ours.

1.85:1 DVD capture: Thora Birch in The Smokers

The last thing one expects from a low-budget guns 'n' gals flick is for it to turn "Dawson's Creek", but Peters trivializes her own subject matter to the extent that we are assured in last-minute voice-over pronouncements of everybody's future successes, including that of Lincoln, the Birch character. (Jefferson's über-deliniquint sister, Lincoln is introduced in Pris make-up and henna tattoos smoking a bong that almost equals her in height; in the second of her three scenes, she plays Russian Roulette with a loaded .44! Aside: Birch is compelling in the role but ultimately the characteristic fearlessness (and Chaney-esque overhaul of her appearance) she invests in it is kind of embarrassing, given the sub-John Waters juvenility of the material.) Ironically, Philipps is now a regular on "Dawson's Creek", which at least has better production values.

MGM's flipper DVD release of The Smokers is a movie-only affair that sports colourful 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and full frame transfers on opposite sides of the platter. Each nonetheless suffers from tenuous detail and muddy contrast; the Dolby Surround soundmix, featuring a lot of post-synched dialogue, is as unprofessional as they come: the balance between live music and voices is completely out of whack, and sound effects are almost nil, never mind surround effects. The disc hits shelves in tandem with the infinitely superior Birch starrer Ghost World.-Bill Chambers