Cinematical

Allegedly a feature film, Caffeine is closer in tone and spirit to a 90-minute sitcom pilot, with its no-stakes relationship crises, strictly-for-laughs supporting players and peppy, robotic score that seemingly emanates from one of those Yamaha keyboard guitars we all got for our seventh birthday. The setting is an English lunch spot, where plate-slinger Vanessa (Mena Suvari) spars with co-workers, acts frustrated by life and tries in vain to pronounce the word "row" in believable British. Suvari's attempts at the Queen's English provide the bulk of the film's humor, while the intended laughs are mostly packaged into sketches, including one where a lunching boyfriend discovers his girlfriend is in porn -- don't you hate it when that's revealed over a tuna san? -- and begins a yelling fit that gets him booted out. Bit concluded, the film returns to its character plotlettes, then segues into another bit, and so on, until we finally reach a musical closing credit sequence so unabashedly awful that watching it will cause your face to melt off like those Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Slaving away in the pristine, mostly foodless kitchen alongside Vanessa is Rachel, (Marsha Thomason) a character who suffers from an absurd inferiority complex that causes her to believe she'll be "letting everyone down" once she moves on, in the near future, to a better job than short-order cook. After lending an ear, Vanessa tells her "quite frankly, I think you deserve something more." Gee, thanks Vanessa -- if only you had been my guidance counselor. Rounding out the main-character quartet is the insufferable Breckin Meyer, playing a kitchen drone/aspiring writer who smokes his cigarettes like a twelfth grader and Mark Pellegrino, a William Forsythe-lookalike who plays a five-alarm gay character who is forever planting his hands on his hips and leading with his chin, as if director John Cosgrove thought exaggerated gay mannerisms alone were comedy gold. Add to this two sensitive stoner characters, each a kind of toxic smelting of Zach Braff and Ashton Kutcher, who alternate between doing hits in the diner bathroom and talking women troubles at their seemingly permanent lunch table.

I counted exactly one genuine laugh in the film, when Meyer's waiter/writer character is told via telephone that his latest book idea has been rejected by a publisher. With tears in his eyes and a tremble in his throat, he asks the voice on the other end: "What do you mean they didn't get it? Are they retarded?" Almost all other attempts at humor fail miserably, despite the director's willingness to suspend all logic and disbelief in the service of his jokes -- I'm thinking in particular of the numerous fantasy sequences that crop up, as well as a late bit in which a singing guitarist suddenly emerges out of the ether in order to serenade one of the main characters when she needs it the least. There's also a 'crazy old lady' character who is allowed to hang around the restaurant, harass and terrify the customers -- she even wields a shotgun at one point -- which should give you as much information as you need about how seriously Caffeine takes itself and its love-deprived main characters.

As I mentioned prior, the film's ending only means the worst is yet to come. Each ill-conceived supporting character from the previous ninety minutes of pain is trotted back out, as if to take undeserved encores, each of them now singing in time with a cat-strangling diddy. Good lord -- does Mena Suvari really need work this badly? No one can deny that she has romcom chops -- were I reviewing at the time, I would have given her performance in Amy Heckerling's Loser a thumbs up -- but either fate or a seriously distracted agent continues to see her placed in completely unsuitable roles, from her stint as a Times Square whore in last year's race-hatred drama Edmond, to the recent Factory Girl, where she materialized in one or two scenes to ask Edie Sedgwick if she was "thirsty for a poke," like some heroin dealing pirate. The oddest thing about her role in Caffeine is that, on reflection, it's hardly a role to begin with; all dramatic and romantic tension revolves around the other characters -- she just watches.

The most depressing thing about Caffeine is that it squanders the freedom of its R-rating and maintains, from beginning to end, a rigid focus on hitting the safest, most predictable, straight-to-DVD plot beats imaginable. There's nothing to suggest that the finished film was whittled down from a once-bold or exciting screenplay. Instead, it feels like the R-rated material -- there are numerous scenes of pot smoking and a healthy dose of American curse words -- has been weirdly crowbarred into an assemblage of storylines that could have been lifted right from Saved by the Bell. There's a guy-loses-girl-but-will-she-take-him-back story, an I'm-getting-out-of-this-dump saga, and even a version of the-boss-is-coming-today, so-shape-up! These plot staples are simply plunked down for us to chew on like a slab of raw meat, without the steak sauce of a clever presentation or fresh spin or snappy writing. After seeing this film, I think I'm switching to de-caf.