That the reach of "All I Want" (a.k.a. "Try Seventeen") exceeds its grasp wouldn't be so damning if it weren't for the fact that the movie isn't reaching that far. Elijah Wood plays 17-year-old virgin Jones Dillon, his very name sounding like an indie film contrivance. The shell-shocked Jones drops out of college on his first day and, lugging a large trunk behind him, moves into an old apartment house that is sort of a de facto artists colony. His neighbors include Brad (Aaron Pearl), a gay painter with a serious cowboy fetish (and who, it's revealed later, can restore a totaled BMW to like-new condition seemingly in a matter of hours); Jane (Franka Potente), a surly photographer getting over a bad relationship; and Lisa (Mandy Moore), an aspiring actress and least eccentric of the building's residents.
Jones has some eccentricities of his own, like writing letters to a father he never knew and slipping into sexy fantasies that come to life on screen but evaporate before things get too sexy. The letters to Dad are never mailed. Instead, they are collected in that trunk of his (real luggage for his metaphorical baggage). Lisa tries to seduce Jones, but Jones, naturally, finds the grumpy, dark-haired Jane more intriguing. Between Jones' interactions with his neighbors are frequent calls to his mother back in Texas (Elizabeth Perkins, one of the movie's high points), who wanders around her large home wearing peignoirs and belting back highballs. She nags him to come home; he nags her to tell him about his father. Hang up. Repeat.
"All I Want" is an indie comedy, but it never quite settles on the type of indie comedy it wants to be. It's mostly quirky, though there are jarring attempts at camp, like when Jones goes to a second-hand store run by Deborah Harry, done up like she's in a John Waters movie and acting accordingly. Often, though, it's just pretentious — painfully so at times, especially when Mandy Moore is speaking. Her acting is competent, but the mannered dialog sounds false coming from her pouty lips. To steal a line from critic Nathan Rabin, you can hear the writing.
"All I Want" reminded me of the indie comedies that crowded video store shelves in the 1990s, the kind that starred Keanu Reeves, Eric Stoltz, Suzy Amis and Harry Dean Stanton: movies that were too off-center for mainstream consumption, too safe to satisfy an art house audience. "All I Want" is not much worse than those movies, but it's not any better, either.
Jones has some eccentricities of his own, like writing letters to a father he never knew and slipping into sexy fantasies that come to life on screen but evaporate before things get too sexy. The letters to Dad are never mailed. Instead, they are collected in that trunk of his (real luggage for his metaphorical baggage). Lisa tries to seduce Jones, but Jones, naturally, finds the grumpy, dark-haired Jane more intriguing. Between Jones' interactions with his neighbors are frequent calls to his mother back in Texas (Elizabeth Perkins, one of the movie's high points), who wanders around her large home wearing peignoirs and belting back highballs. She nags him to come home; he nags her to tell him about his father. Hang up. Repeat.
"All I Want" is an indie comedy, but it never quite settles on the type of indie comedy it wants to be. It's mostly quirky, though there are jarring attempts at camp, like when Jones goes to a second-hand store run by Deborah Harry, done up like she's in a John Waters movie and acting accordingly. Often, though, it's just pretentious — painfully so at times, especially when Mandy Moore is speaking. Her acting is competent, but the mannered dialog sounds false coming from her pouty lips. To steal a line from critic Nathan Rabin, you can hear the writing.
"All I Want" reminded me of the indie comedies that crowded video store shelves in the 1990s, the kind that starred Keanu Reeves, Eric Stoltz, Suzy Amis and Harry Dean Stanton: movies that were too off-center for mainstream consumption, too safe to satisfy an art house audience. "All I Want" is not much worse than those movies, but it's not any better, either.