Secret Admirer

An unsigned billet doux slipped between the pages of 'The Pageant of World History' triggers an escalating comedy of errors as it passes round a group of college kids and their equally gullible parents, massaging each reader's amour propre with wild fantasies of a secret admirer. Here is the stuff of classic French farce - Marivaux rewritten Neil Simon-style - were it not that this game of love and chance offers no notable insights into the lust, gluttony, and other deadly boring sins of Middle America. Howell, the young star of The Outsiders and Red Dawn, evinces a certain ingenuous comedic flair. For the rest, the characters are rather less memorable than the Pepsi cans, Fruit Loops and other brand name junk foods looming large in the foreground of almost every frame. And how could anyone endorse an ending wherein the girl-next-door gives up a world cruise to stay at home with the boy-next-door?