Prinze charming in love - again

You can almost hear the agent and producer collaborating on the teen-oriented romantic comedy "Down to You" (Miramax, PG-13, VHS/rental, DVD/$20): "This is the perfect role for Freddy Prinze Jr. He won`t even have to seek a new audience or stretch as an actor. Hey, it`s Freddy in love. He`s done it so often he can do it in his sleep."

To Prinze`s credit, he did not sleepwalk through this edgy confection. But he is in serious danger of being typecast as the King of Teen Romances. Prinze and Julia Styles ("10 Things I Hate About You") are just a couple of kids in love and out of love. They play the cycle: cute meet, three months of abstinence and discovery, sex, honeymoon, relationship and break-up.

Writer-director Kris Isacsson approaches the story from the retrospective perspective. We get Prinze`s Al and Stiles` Imogen each giving their side of the story, which originated in their college days in New York City. Do they get back together? Are you kidding? There is a sacred formula to these things, and a perpetual broken heart has no part in it.

Isacsson has given his stars a solid cast with which to work, including Shawn Hatosy ("Outside Providence"), Zak Orth and Selma Blair ("Cruel Intentions"). Henry Winkler plays Prinze`s dad. Just a warning: This is marketed as a teen romance comedy - with a PG-13 rating - but the sex, drugs and pornography content are stronger than most PG-13s I`ve seen in the past. Think twice about letting your 13-year-old rent this one.

Speaking of teens, in a much different genre, we have "Boiler Room," featuring 19-year-old college dropout Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi), who abandons a nice career running a blackjack casino out of his Long Island, N.Y., townhouse for a less-honest profession as a stock broker. He was doing fine with the casino, except that it didn`t endear him to his father, a high-court judge played with bristling energy by Ron Rifkin.

At first, Seth thinks J.T. Marlin (sounds like P.T. Barnum) is legit - a room full of young white males hustling stocks in cold calls to whales all over the country. He becomes a rising star, separating anxious family men from their life savings by holding out the promise of quick riches in an exploding market. All around him are twentysomethings with more cash than they know what to do with. They can quote "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" line for line. They drive Ferraris and live in huge houses with hardly any furniture in them.

"These guys have all the money in the world and not a clue as to what to do with it," observes Seth.

Despite his limpid-eye demeanor, Seth is a keen observer of human nature. And one of the things he observes early on is that something is askew about the way he and his associates are raking in the dough.

"You will make your first million within three years," says J.T. Marlin recruiter Jim Young (Ben Affleck in a small yet powerful role). "It is not a question of if, but how many times over."

With this kind of lure, J.T. Marlin isn`t what you`d call a hard sell. Its appeal is to the young white males of Seth`s generation. Guys who can see the high life just beyond their grasp and yet they don`t have the patience or acumen to do the hard work it takes to get there. They want it now, they want it fast. They`ll look the other way, if necessary, if the payoff is big enough, quick enough. Seth calls it "the white-boy way of slinging crack rock - I became a stock broker."

Watching the pros do whatever it takes to close a sale, Vin Diesel especially is both disturbing and amazing to watch. You wouldn`t want to be on the other end of the phone as he lies, cajoles, bullies - whatever it takes - to separate his customer from his savings. The boiler room in which they all work is a testosterone-driven pressure cooker. The aggression is as thick as fog, the money to be made as palpable as a steak and beer. You just have to be willing to screw over your own grandparents to turn a buck.

Actually watching Seth and his buddies as they race from charter buses to a hotel party room to celebrate a terrific month is reminiscent of a scene from another movie, "Pinocchio." Recall the truant delinquents who raced from the stage coaches to the Lost Island where they overindulge in beer and gambling and other earthly vices until they turn into braying jackasses? These are the brokers of J.T. Marlin, this obscure firm an hour down the Long Island Expressway from Wall Street.

Well, not really Seth. He`s a natural, he plays the game, but he is never really a part of it. He doesn`t crave the instant wealth nearly as much as he craves his father`s unconditional love and respect. When he finds out this road isn`t the one that will get him there, it is a heart-breaking moment. When his father finally reaches out for him, it is a disastrous moment.

Seth figures out the scam behind the J.T. Marlin millions, just about the time the FBI targets him as their take-down guy. Seth wants to bring the racket to its knees almost as badly as the FBI, but not quite the same way. I`ve got to warn you, the movie ends abruptly and with hardly the payoff worthy of the story that leads up to the moment. Perhaps it can be attributed to director Ben Younger`s inexperience. For whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of business left on the table.

Still, to complain would be to sell short this richly enacted, powerfully told tale of a son adrift in a world with no markers and a father who throws rocks instead of a life ring to his son. This will appeal to fans of "The Fight Club" - that`s not my original observation, but a legitimate comparison - to yet another film about disenfranchised young white males with high expectations, low ambition and a hunger for the things working a legit 9-to-5 just won`t bring.ALSO THIS WEEK:

"The Hurricane" (Universal, R, VHS/rental, DVD/$27) - Denzel Washington takes on a powerful, stirring Oscar-nominated role as the imprisoned cause-celebre boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

Directed by Norman Jewison, this is a reality-based film about a man wrongfully jailed for three murders in 1966. After 20 years behind bars, his cause is taken up by a young Brooklyn teen living in Canada, eventually leading to his release in 1988.

"All About My Mother" (Columbia TriStar, R, VHS/rental, DVD/$30) - Pedro Almodovar comes through again with a warm, quirky, funny and tragic story in which women are center-stage, explored but not exploited.

Manuela (Cecilia Roth) sees her only son - her reason for living - die before her eyes, struck by a car while chasing a car containing a stage actress he adores. In her teen son`s diary, she reads of his desire to meet his biological father and sets off on a journey to Barcelona to hunt the father down. Dad is easy to track down, yet hard to find. Everybody, it seems, knows the transvestite Lola, yet nobody can attest to his/her whereabouts. Along the way, Manuela befriends a pregnant nun (Penelope Cruz) and the aging actress (Marisa Paredes) for whom her son died.

This tale won the 1999 Best Foreign Film Oscar and Golden Globe. Almodovar was named best director at the Cannes Film Festival - among many other deserved honors for this film. The DVD contains "An Intimate Conversation with Pedro Almodovar," among other extras.

"Gorgeous" (Columbia TriStar, PG-13, VHS/rental, DVD/$25) - Yet another action-comedy from the very likeable Jackie Chan, who finally scored big here recently in the quirky western "Shanghai Kid" and the earlier "Rush Hour."

In this Hong Kong-based tale, Chan is a multimillionaire entrepreneur who befriends a young woman from Taiwan while doing battle with his business rivals.

"I am Frigid ... Why?" (First Run, unrated, VHS/$25) - Classic sexploitation film from the early 1970s about a young woman who is traumatized by events from her past and remains so until she can confront her demons. By writer-director Max Pecas.

"Spy Games" (Trimark, R, VHS) - Bill Pullman, Irene Jacob and Bruno Kirby are remnants of the Cold War who suddenly find themselves in the middle of global maneuvering to secure a videotape encoded with highly classified information.

"Active Stealth" (Paramount, R, VHS/rental, DVD/$30) - A supersecret stealth plane is stolen while on maneuvers. Army pilot Jefferson Pike (William Baldwin) is the man to get it back.

"The Real Macaw" (Paramount, PG, VHS/$20) - John Goodman is the voice of a very clever family parrot that happens to know where the pirate treasure is buried in this family-friendly adventure yarn. Jason Robards and Jamie Croft are grandfather and grandson, respectively, in search of the buried treasure.

"The Audrey Hepburn Story" (Columbia TriStar, PG, VHS/rental, DVD$20) - The not-so-legendary TV personality Jennifer Love Hewitt stars in this made-for-TV bio-pic about the legendary actress.

"Greaser`s Palace" (Image, VHS/$20) - A zoot-suited drifter finds his true calling and begins to perform miracles, ultimately ending up in The Palace, a saloon owned by the one and only Seaweed Greaser (Luana Anders). Written and directed by Robert ("Putney Swope") Downey. Stars Allan Arbus, Luana Anders and Albert Henderson.COMING ATTRACTIONS:

July 25: The first two of 10 episodes of the erotic novel-turned-series "The Story of O" on one DVD. Volumes 2-5 will be released monthly through Nov. 28.

Aug. 15: Naomi Judd and Andy Lawrence take a stand to protect the old oak in "Family Tree."

Aug. 29: A classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "The Sound of Music," on DVD for the first time.

Sept. 5: Director Eric Rohmer`s romantic yarn about a young man attracted to three women at the same time, "A Summer`s Tale." Mary Stuart Masterson and Jena Malone are sisters who share a deep bond of love in "The Book of Stars."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Robert J. Hawkins