Wasted on the Young

Review by Anthony Morris

Wasted On The Young follows Darren (Oliver Ackland), a loner at an elite high school run by the swim team. Unfortunately for him, he's both on the swim team and his step brother Zack (Alex Russell) is the leader of both the team and the "In" crowd.

So while Zack is holding massive parties in their luxury home, Darren is hiding out in his bedroom making remote-controlled robots.

This balance is disrupted when up-and-coming cute girl Xandrie (Adelaide Clemens) decides that Darren is a guy she'd like to get to know better, much to the annoyance of Zack and his henchmen. 

She gets invited to one of Zack's big parties, but instead of true love blooming, the cool kids take her aside, drug her drink, have their way with her, and it's all downhill from there (literally).

There's a lot of good in Wasted On The Young; writer / director Ben C Lucas does a great job of conveying both the glamour and the isolation of these rich kids' lives, giving events a chilly style like something out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. 

The performances are solid across the board, and the script works hard to give even the most two-dimensional characters enough motivation to prevent them from being just simple good or bad guys. 

However, the story itself is a bit of a mess, packed with sometimes painfully pretentious moments and scenes more suited to a bad telemovie. 

Wasted On The Young isn't quite in love with its style - it's always clear that bullying is a bad thing and the bullies are bad people - but it's more interested in bringing digital effects than actual insights to the table. So how much you'll get out of this film depends on what you're looking for. 

It's stylish, but it's hollow (and not in a way that reflects on the hollow nature of many of its characters: it'd actually have to say even less then it does to pull off that trick), and as the film itself tries to get across, sometimes good looks just aren't enough.

2.5 out of 5

Wasted on the Young
Australian release: 3rd March, 2011
Official Site: Wasted on the Young
Cast: Oliver Ackland, Adelaide Clemens, Alex Russell
Director: Ben C. Lucas