A SLACKER EPIC? SOUNDS LIKE AN oxymoron. Usually movies about the young and well rested feature no more than a padful of twenty-somethings making disaffected comments about the life that is passing them by. In Beautiful Girls, however, doping off is portrayed as the great no-growth industry of a small New England town buried in snow and youthful regrets. And because its creators bring to the topic of fecklessness its opposite qualities--ambition, energy, intelligence--they transform it into something interesting.
It's the guys, naturally, who are the most funked out. They are passionately committed to the wrong women (as is the case...