All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
The film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane has been languishing in release-push-back-hell for many years now. It was supposed to be theatrically released way back in 2007 by the Weinstein Company, but then when Grindhouse was released and it ended up as a relative failure in the box office, they sold the rights to Senator Entertainment. The movie's release date kept getting pushed back and finally Senator went out of business, putting Mandy Lane in some type of strange puragatory regarding it's actual release in the US. Luckily, the film has been released over seas on home video already, and that is how I was finally able to see it.
Most of the time when release dates on films are continually pushed back, it indicates there are major problems with the quality of the film. More often than not the film is just not good enough to merit a theatrical release. One only has too look at how long a few of Eddie Murphy's recent films have sat on the shelf to realize this is true. Fortunately for Mandy Lane, though, it looks to be a case of the filmmakers having no luck with distributors and bad timing.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane opens with the title character Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) and her friend Emmet (Michael Welch) paling around at school. The opening shots of the film signal that Mandy is the "it" girl at this particular high school. All the boys want her and all the girls want to be her. Dylan (Adam Powell) invites her to a party at her house that night. Once there, Dylan does not get along with Emmet and the two get into a scuffle. Soon after though, Dylan tries to make peace with Emmet since he still wants to get with Mandy. After a little talking, Emmet convinces Dylan that he needs to do something crazy to win Mandy over. Dylan proceeds to attempt to jump off the roof into the pool, and obviously, fails miserably.
Flash forward nine months and Emmet and Mandy are no longer friends. Mandy has started to hang out with a different crowd. Red (Aaron Himelstein) is planning on having a party at his father's ranch and wants to use the opportunity to seal the deal with Mandy. He invites her, as well as Chloe (Whitney Able), Bird (Edwin Hodge), Jake (Luke Grimes), and Marlin (Melissa Price) to come along for the debauchery. Jake and Marlin are the only couple on the retreat, but it becomes clear that Jake would still rather sleep with Mandy. On the way there they steal beer, someone gets some in the backseat of the car, and they smoke some pot. Mandy doesn't partake in these activities. She exudes the perfect angel among this crowd, a real virginal character. Once on the ranch they meet Garth (Anson Mount), the hired help for the ranch and also an ex-marine. He wants the kids to stay in line and not get hurt while they're there. The whole group proceeds to party and all the boys continue to make advances on Mandy. Soon though, a killer shows up and starts to dispatch the nubile teens. Who is this mysterious killer and is it someone who just can't live without Mandy?
If the description for the film sounds like a lot of teen drama and very soap opera-ish, it is at first. The characters are not terribly developed, and they arn't even really introduced much in the beginning of the film. One of the only characters that gets a back story, beyond the boys wanting to all have sex with Mandy, is Chloe. She is a more tormented character and is actually given some development.
The acting in the film is standard for this type of film. There arn't any star making performances, but none are of the laughable variety. The casts acting chops arn't really ever tested, considering they only have to really act terrified or messed up on alcohol or drugs. Anson Mount, who plays Garth, is probably one of the better actors of the group. He does a good job of portraying the concerned, more mature thinker, with his allegiance to his Red's father being tested by the teens wild partying. Not that Amber Heard isn't drop dead gorgeous, but I never really got the feeling that she would have been the ultimate conquest for every guy at her high school. She throws a little bit of the shy girl-next-door type into her performance, yet she never really strikes the notes to make her worth all the trouble these guys are going through to get her in the sack.
One thing that the film does that many slasher films do not is reveal the killer fairly early. I won't spoil it in this review, but if you've seen a few horror films before, you can probably guess who it is after the first 10 minutes. But this doesn't really hurt the film, it just takes away some of the mystery early on. The film does start to drag a little big, because there actually arn't that many deaths in the film. And those that are shown arn't terribly gory either. The filmmakers definitely played it safe when it came to the shots in the death department. But again, the film isn't even an hour and a half long, so the drawn out parts don't last.
And then there is the ending. Since the film has sat on the shelf over here in America for so long ,the ending didn't seem as fresh to me as it would have had I seen the film back in 2007. Not that the ending ruins the film or anything like that, just due to other films coming out with similar endings through the years it has worn thin.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is not anything mind-blowing or utterly original, but it isn't a bad movie either. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I was very middle-ground on the whole affair. There is no new ground treaded here as far as plot or characters. If the film would have been released back when it was supposed to be, it might have done some business at the box office, but nothing monumental. It will never be classified as a cult film because there just isn't anything to really latch onto in it for staying power. As worried as I was that the delays for it's release bad been because it was awful, it was far from that. I would recommend this film as a rental, or if it ever comes out on Netflix or a service like that as a watch. Was it worth wait? Not really, because the film didn't really live up to 5 years of waiting. If you go in with low expectations though, it's a decent watch.
