Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2007)

Director: Jonathan Levine

2
Average user rating
1 review

Synopsis

Mandy Lane. Beautiful. Untouched. High school royalty waiting to be crowned. Since the dawn of Junior year, men have tried to possess her. Some have even died in reckless pursuit of this 16 year-old Texas angel. Chloe and Red invite Mandy out to Red's family ranch for the weekend. Mandy sees it as an excellent opportunity to cement her new friendships. The boys see it as an opportunity to finally get with Mandy Lane. Driving across Texas, the kids begin to gently chip away at the wall that surrounds her. Joints are smoked. A keg is stolen off a beer truck. Pills are crushed to fine powder and inhaled. At the ranch, all the boys start to make their move – each one hoping to be the first to attain the unattainable Mandy Lane. However, as night falls and the booze, drugs, and hormones take over, things are said and advances made which can never be reversed. Suddenly, sweet Mandy finds herself pit in a brutal struggle for survival against someone whose interest she has rejected.

Movie review

From Time Out London

The first half of this postmodern ‘slasher’ movie flirts with some intriguing ideas. At a high-school pool party, golden boy Dylan – egged on by weirdo outcast Emmet (Michael Welch) – tries to impress the enigmatic, virginal Mandy (Amber Heard) by diving off the roof – head-first into the concrete pool surround.

Nine months later, Mandy and some photo-fit teen victims – naive jock Bird, airhead blonde Chloe, under-confident shag-beast Marlin, and dumb waster Jake – enjoy/endure a drink- and drug-fuelled weekend at Red’s family’s Texas ranch. Things turn nasty when a masked, shotgun-toting psycho starts picking them off one by one. The prime suspect is handsome ranch hand, Garth, a solid blue collar guy who resents these decadent, privileged teens. Or perhaps someone inside the group harbouring a grudge?

Jacob Foreman’s uneven script shows its hand too early, before destroying our credibility with a final twist that makes nonsense of everything we’ve seen. The film-makers think they are making a serious statement about Columbine-style rampages, but their scuzzy fanboy horror movie is more self-conscious than subversive.

Author: Nigel Floyd 2008-02-12 12:53:16

Time Out London Issue 1956 Feb 13-19 2008

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

User reviews of this film

  • steph said...
    Posted on Jan 24 2009 13:41 As I begin to watch, i think that the film is rather good! little did i know that it would just become stupid. All was quite cliche, which i expected, however the twist at the end left me confused! I just don't understand it! pointless ending, pointless film!
    Report as inappropriate

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Watch Trailer

Cast & crew

Director: Jonathan Levine

Producer: Darren Genet

Cast: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Michael Welch, Aaron Himmelstein full cast

Genre(s): Horror


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.