SEX AND BREAKFAST

Why is it that former child actors always seem to make the transition to adulthood by posing nude or engaging in a porny onscreen sex scene?

Why is it that former child actors always seem to make the transition to adulthood by posing nude or engaging in a porny onscreen sex scene? It's as if they feel the need to prove that they've successfully completed puberty by showing us their bits and pieces in action. This move may have worked for the likes of Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson, but I'm sure there are countless other ways to convey that an actor is no longer six years old and should now be taken seriously. Making a movie about boring relationships and group sex should be right at the bottom of that list, but that's exactly what Eliza Dushku and Macaulay Culkin did with Sex and Breakfast.

Shall we all take a moment to remember the first time we saw these adorable and talented kids onscreen? How heartbreakingly cute was Eliza in This Boy's Life with that weird bald patch in her hair? And of course we all remember when Macaulay's career exploded in the early 90s. He won us over with Uncle Buck, threatened to take over the world with Home Alone, then rocked out with Michael Jackson in the "Black or White" video. It's hard not to feel personally invested in people you've watched grow up onscreen, so you'll probably understand why the opening scene of Sex and Breakfast made me want to put my eyes out.

There was Macaulay, doing it with this girl (Alexis Dziena) who looked alarmingly like a cross between Oksana Baiul and Fairuza Balk, and throwing around the "p" word in reference to things other than cats. Oh ew! And as soon as they stopped doing it, he switched on a tape of them doing it another time, and watched it while Girlfriend sat on the edge of the tub. Five minutes in, and already I was scarred.

I took a second crack at the movie, and though nothing was quite so jarring as the first scene, the rest of the film turned out to be profoundly boring and somewhat immature. Basically Macaulay and his girlfriend struggle to deal with their relationship issues (trust, jealousy, satisfaction, etc.) while in a parallel storyline, Eliza and her boyfriend attempt to do the same. Eventually worlds collide for an awkward session of group sex, which helps nothing and isn't remotely scintillating. One couple survives. The other breaks up. The end.

We know Macaulay and Eliza can act, so I find it very hard to believe that they can't get their hands on better material than this. Macaulay is great with dry humor, but he seems out of place in this context... like maybe he should be in an actual comedy rather than a low-budget sex drama. Eliza's character is somewhat hard and unlikable, and seems as if she's forever trying to prove how adult she is—"I wanna do it with a girl! Let's smoke a fattie!" Ah yes, you know you're grown up when you've finally allowed yourself to utter those words! Perhaps the point is that these characters don't know what makes a real relationship or what constitutes a grown-up life, but the story feels forced, as though everyone involved is trying too hard to say or do something taboo.

At only 82 minutes, there is still plenty of dead air in the film. Extended shots of characters walking, riding in taxis, and navel-gazing quickly wear thin, though they're less awkward to watch than the scenes that attempt to titillate us. We'd all do far better to skip this baby, pull out our copies of My Girl, and call it a night.