Twenty-One Movie Review

Patsy Kensit wants to be a movie star in the worst way. Twenty-One is a skin-deep study of a skin-deep character involved in skin-deep relationships. Kensit is in virtually every scene, unlike Lethal Weapon 2 or the ill-fated Chicago Joe and the Showgirl or Absolute Beginners in which she drifted in and out of the protagonists’ lives. Kensit's character Katie has sex with a married man she doesn't love because she doesn't have sex with the single junkie she does love. Got that? Later on Katie marries her best friend (appealingly played by Maynard Eziashi), then leaves him so that she can play the field with American men. In between men, Katie is nice to her Dad, mean to her Mum, and has dreary luncheon discussions with her girlfriend Sophie. All this is shown without a shred of insight by Twenty-One’s “color-by-numbers” writer/director Don Boyd. You can always tell when Boyd knows that the action is leading nowhere; the direction gets very arty and tense. Key plot shifts occur offscreen as if it would be uncool to reveal Katie's life for the melodramatic mess it is. But at least showing the melodrama would be a choice, and Twenty-One avoids making choices for most of its 90-odd minute running time. The ambitious Ms. Kensit is not without talent, but she is definitely without a decent showcase here. She would fare a bit better in 1995's Angels and Insects.

1991 (R) 92m/C GB Patsy Kensit, Jack Shepherd, Patrick Ryecart, Maynard Eziashi, Rufus Sewell, Sophie Thompson, Susan Wooldridge, Julia Goodman; D: Don Boyd; W: Don Boyd; C: Keith Goddard; M: Michael Berkeley. VHS, LV