by Lisa Schwarzbaum
from 'Entertainment Weekly's website'


There's a shocking, casual quality to the self-destructive narcissism of the
pretty, petty kids squandering their lives in the L.A. sunshine of The Young
Unknowns. Lounging at his father's swank Hollywood house while Dad is off
making a movie in London, Charlie (''My So-Called Life'''s Devon Gummersall)
fills the emptiness in his long, aimless days by cruelly belittling his
girlfriend Paloma (Arly Jover), roughhousing with his hanger-on buddy Joe
(Eion Bailey), and treating Cassandra (''ER'''s Leslie Bibb), an
in-over-her-head new girl in town, with such mirthless disdain that the
coked-up colt retreats deep behind the fortress of drugs she has stashed in
her purse.

This raw and potent feature debut of writer-director Catherine Jelski is by no
means the first indie to pin a generation of wriggling credit-card brats to
the screen (think ''Igby Goes Down''), and it says nothing new about parental
negligence among the rich and name-dropping. But from her very first scene --
a David Hockney-esque expanse of L.A. swimming-pool blue -- Jelski decisively
establishes a dispassionate insider's voice. The miseries that accrue for this
foursome during their wasted time together are stupid, sad, and -- most
intentionally disturbing of all -- unexceptional. The performances, meanwhile,
especially those of Gummersall and Bibb, are impressively natural and uncensored.

(Posted:04/18/03)