The Opposite of Sex 

Buy now from Amazon.com.

Director: Don Roos
Cast:
Christina Ricci
Martin Donovan
Lisa Kudrow
Lyle Lovett
Genre: Comedy

I've been a fan of Christina Ricci ever since she was in "Mermaids" with Winona Ryder and Cher; she has always had the kind of eyes that could sear through ferrite from across the room. Even as Wednesday in "The Addams Family," she was always a little soul that seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Those uncomfortable with liking a starlet so young have cause to rejoice; Christina is Of Age now, and she's got a good movie starring her to boot.

Ricci plays Dedee Truitt, a girl born into the white-trashingest family in the South. Seducing everyone around her, she then runs away to live with her barely known stepbrother Bill (Martin Donovan). Bill's gay lover falls in love with Dedee, natch, since she's an expert at twisting any situation to suit her purposes, and soon she's on the lam with Bill's money, his boyfriend and has (follow this now) Bill's EX-lover's sister after her (Lisa Kudrow).

Confusing, I know, but it all seems so effortless on screen. Lisa Kudrow turns in the best performance of her shady film career as Lucia, the woman who takes out her anger on everyone within epithet-distance with some of the best barbs in show business; this woman could make Don Rickles call his mommy. Martin Donovan, doing a cool twist on his character from Hal Hartley's "Amateur," is also fun to watch; his constant acquiescence to Dedee coming off as courageously pusillanimous.

But Ricci's the star here, her lunar eyes and vast, milky body sumptuously inhabiting the character that is so easy to hate that the movie even toys with your patience. "I don't have a heart of gold, and I don't get one later," she warns at the film's beginning, and even if that doesn't turn out to be true either, it's just one more lie that makes "The Opposite of Sex" so much fun.

—Ian Williams

Return to Ian's movie reviews.