Classic Movie Review: 'The Crush'

The Crush (1993)

Directed by Alan Shapiro

Written by Alan Shapiro

Starring Alicia Silverstone, Cary Elwes, Jennifer Rubin, Kurtwood Smith

Release Date April 2nd 1993

Published June 17th, 2023

According to writer-director Alan Shapiro, The Crush, is based on a real life experience he had in which a teenage girl developed a fixation on him that became obsessive. This was an exaggeration to say the least. The original film, as shot and scripted by Shapiro, even used the real name of the teenager that he claimed inspired the film. Naturally, because she is portrayed as a murderous nutjob in the movie, the real-life teenager sued Shapiro for Defamation of Character. The studio responded by clumsily changing the name of the main character via a comically bad piece of over-dubbing.

It's doubtful that Shapiro's story actually happened as he characterized it. The reality appears to be that creepy studio executives were eager to make a thriller based on sexualizing a teenage girl and found Shapiro's very silly, self-aggrandizing script in a pile and saw potential dollar signs from the always lucrative creep market. The production of the film seems to back up that assertion as star Alicia Silverstone had to dodge the attempts by executives to get her to do nude scenes and sexual scenes beyond what is in the final film. Silverstone was 16 years old at the time she starred in The Crush.

So insistent on a nude scene was one particular executive that a compromise was made. A body double stripped down for a scene showing off her backside in place of Silverstone's. Bear in mind, Silverstone was 16 at the time she made The Crush and the character in the movie is slightly younger than that. A mere 30 years ago, a Hollywood executive felt comfortable enough to ask a teenage actress to do a nude scene in a movie and became so insistent on the baring of teenage flesh in the movie that they had to compromise with an adult body double. That's just some of the super creepy backstory of 1993's The Crush.

Cary Elwes is the star of The Crush as journalist Nick Elliott. Nick has moved to Los Angeles for work and is in desperate need of an apartment. Finding nothing in his poverty level budget range, Nick jumps at the chance to take a cheap apartment over the garage of a rich, suburban family headed up by Cliff Forrester (Kurtwood Smith) and his wife, Liv (Gwynyth Walsh). Cliff and Liv welcome the young journalist without warning him about their teenage daughter, Darian (Alicia Silverstone). As he's moving in, Nick sees Darian for the first time and the creep factor all around is off the charts.

Spying Darian from his apartment window, Nick leers longingly as Darian luxuriates in a bathing suit in the backyard, sunbathing. She catches him and seeming to enjoy the attention, she eventually seeks Nick out. Darian quickly moves from minor flirtation to obsession. Her crush fast becomes an awkward tete a tete in which Nick must warn the teenager away from him as he doesn't seem certain that he could resist her advances. Ewwwww!

The film then quite awkwardly folds Nick into very silly situations in which he ends up in Darian's house, trapped in her closet, just as she is coming out of the show and getting dressed. Her duplicity leads her to try again and again to entrap Nick into a relationship while he continuously incriminates himself while trying to avoid going to bed with her. It's all a lot male fantasy and the way arrogant men like to portray themselves as desirable when, in reality, they are super-creeps just trying to justify their own egos.

I have no doubt that something happened between the director and this young woman who sued him for defamation, not that he did anything illegal or that she tried to entrap him, but more along the lines of a misunderstanding and some hurt feelings. However, in turning that story into a Hollywood thriller, it's become grossly exaggerated and just plain gross in how the movie fetishized a teenage girl for both the prurient interest of creepy Hollywood sex pests and the sex pest movie going audience. It's both a masturbation fantasy and a box office gambit, as the public often proves to be just as creepy and fetishistic as Hollywood executives.

Thankfully, The Crush was not a major hit. It was instead, only a modest money-maker. The film did demonstrate that men wanted to leer at Alicia Silverstone, an image she would cultivate to great success in videos for the band Aerosmith. That said, when Silverstone returned to the big screen, she was more mature and self-protective and managed to turn that sexy image into box office stardom in a role that didn't fetishize her sexuality, the brilliant comedy blockbuster, Clueless. Clueless showed Silverstone was a top comic talent, a terrific actress, and a canny star capable of controlling and deploying her own media perception, if only until the hit movies ran out.

Today, The Crush has little cache beyond being remembered as a creepy older man movie about creeping on a teenage girl. That's a surface level observation. A deeper look at The Crush reveals a sort of window into the bizarre masculine psyche where every woman is to be suspected, where sexual attraction is something men are not accountable for, and where even the innocence of feminine youth is seen as acting upon a man in a way that uncontrollably compromises him. It's also this weird psycho-sexual notion of blaming women for making men horny.

This is something we don't talk enough about, probably because it is an awkward and inconvenient truth. Far too many men have it in mind to blame women for making men sexually excited simply by existing. It's deeply ingrained in deeply patriarchal, religion first cultures. Women are supposed to cover themselves head to toe so as not to tempt men. Thus, men are relieved of the burden of having to have self control or respect for women. I use the word 'burden' with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This is a very immature, childish notion. Men can't be bothered to take responsibility for their desires so they force women to do it for them.

The Crush is similarly regressive. "It's not the man's fault that he's sexually attracted to a teenager, it's hers", the movie seems to say. She's the one who comes on to him, she's the one who desires him and he heroically resists her advances while she goes insane. It's the kind of narrative that plays out in a courtroom when a man is accused of sexual assault. Blame the victim for being flirtatious and attractive. The definition of flirtatious often being that she was merely polite and was dressed comfortably while being a naturally attractive person.

I can hear some people thinking 'But Sean, the movie literally portrays her as the predator and him as the victim.' Yes, that's true strawman, you're right. But, that's exactly the male fantasy that the movie is trying to portray. There is no nuance, no realistic attempt to give a human motivation to Silverstone's character. She's a caricature of a movie Lolita. She exists as reassurance to creeps that when they are creeping on teenage girls, it's because she wants them, she's the one doing this, the man is an innocent. If you want to tell this story properly, Silverstone's character should have some depth beyond being fetishized in bathing suits, jean shorts, or nude while changing.

The character is portrayed as a crazed, out control, hormonal monster. She's a horror movie villain. That's a male fantasy. Having a gorgeous teenager throwing themselves at you and you heroically resist the urge to have sex with her, that's a male fantasy. I'm not saying it's never happened, I'm saying that as it is portrayed in this terrible movie, it's the act of a man filming his particular fantasy, his fetish. Why did Alan Shapiro decide to make a movie of this supposed real life incident? Why would he want to put a teenage girl on blast like this, using her real name in the movie before he and the studio were sued and chose to badly dub over that name with a similar name.

Why do that? It's really gross when you drill down on it. Let's posit that this actually happened the way he said it did, I don't believe it, but let's follow his logic. A child tries to lure him into a sexual relationship while attempting to murder people who get in her way. This 'really' happened so let's make a creepy, sweaty, Hollywood thriller out of it. Also, let's put the teenage protagonist in skimpy clothes and sexualized situations. Because, we're responsible adults who want to condemn this behavior, even as we are perpetuating it for cheap thrills and financial gain.

Yeah, do you see now how super-creepy, weird and full-of-it that idea is? If this were based on a true story it's deeply irresponsible and strange to turn it into a Hollywood thriller that employs an actual teenager that will be directed to take part in sexual and violent situations. Her character is to be condemned for her horny and mentally ill behavior, but we're also going to profit from showing off that behavior to a paying audience and use the marketing campaign to entice people into paying us to see it. A psychiatrist could have a field day drilling down on the bizarre motivations and leaps in logic that lead to someone making a movie this bizarre and creepy.

The Crush was recently the subject of my new podcast, a spinoff of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, Everyone's a Critic 1993. Each week, myself and my co-hosts, teenager M.J, and Gen-X-er Amy, watch a movie from 1993 in chronological release order. It's a fascinating window into how much movies and popular culture has changed in the past 30 years. You can hear the Everyone's a Critic 1993 Podcast on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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