Girl

So, this is a fun drama about a free-spirited alt girl, Cybil, played perfectly by Tara Reid, as she faces hardships in her life, only to learn that sometimes the person you need to save is yourself. Nah, that's not the movie, but it should have been.
This is a very odd, coming-of-age story about Andrea (played by the beautiful Dominique Swain), our eighteen-year-old lead.
Look, this movie does everything wrong, to an extent that it's almost impressive. This was made in 1998, it's set in that same year. I was alive during this time, I'm the same age Andrea was in the film. None of this makes sense. It doesn't make sense now, and it certainly would have been weird during 1998. It's no wonder I never heard of this.
The movie is really just three stories jammed together, and it would have worked much better if they would have made it about Cybil; it really is her story.
As it is, this is about a girl who is naively trying to find who she is, while navigating the miasma of adolescent romance. Being fair to Swain, she was miscast here. I love her, I'm glad she was in her underwear at the start of the movie, but she was wrong for this role. I cannot buy her as a girl who is smart enough to be accepted into an ivy-league college, but doesn't understand anything else about life. Okay, she's eighteen, not eight. I think she could have handled the role much better if it were a straightforward drama.
That's the other problem: the tone! The tone is all wrong. The movie doesn't know if it wants to be a serious drama or a comedy. Do dramedies exist? Yes. Is that what this is? No. This is just a mess. Just to give an idea of what I am talking about, the movie mentions date rape, and suicide, as mere details... and also has a moment when Andrea's elderly parents show her how condoms work, by putting one on a banana. Oh, how fun. The serious scenes come across as goofy, and the funny moments just don't land. I feel like the writer wanted this to be _Sixteen Candles_ (1984) for the '90s.
Apparently this was based off a book, so maybe that is better. What is most puzzling to me is how this felt very personal, like autobiographical, yet it doesn't make sense for the time it is set. Like I said, I was eighteen when this was made. 1998 was not like this. Rock was all but dead at this time, and the movie even mentions Kurt Cobain. It would be like setting this in 1993 and having Andrea lusting about a singer for a hair-metal band. Just doesn't make sense.
Recommended to no one. If you want '90s romance that knows what it's doing, go watch _Singles_ (1992) or _Reality Bites_ (1994).