Potent Chemistry Keeps Teen Romance Bubbling

“Crazy/beautiful” is a film that dares to ask the tough questions. Can a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks find happiness with a spoiled rich kid gagging on her silver spoon? Can a studious guy from Boyle Heights find love with a baby stoner from Pacific Palisades? Can . . . you get the idea.

Though it’s easy (make that irresistible) to mock a film that takes high school romance more seriously than Gray Davis takes the California power crisis, “crazy/beautiful” is very much of a guilty pleasure. A nifty piece of teenage romantic piffle, it combines two strong and attractive performances with a shameless “they live in two different worlds” plot line to amiably entertaining effect. You just have to be in the mood to think being 17 is, like, the most important age. Ever.

“I remember 17,” Nicole Oakley (Kirsten Dunst) says dreamily from what turns out to be the elevated perspective of, say, her early 20s. “You could be anywhere when your life begins and the future opens up in front of you.” That is, like, so true.

A wealthy but bored-with-it-all student at fictitious Pacific High, Nicole is as jaded and disaffected as a thrice-married divorcee twice her age. With a father (Bruce Davison) addicted to his work and a stepmother (Lucinda Jenney) consumed with a new child, poor Nicole has become a willful queen of bad attitude.

When she’s not scheming with best friend Maddy (Taryn Manning) about how to get into parties at the Malibu Colony, Nicole is hanging out with fellow spoiled rich kids who drink during class, moan about too much stress in their lives and consider a changed cell phone number a major crisis.

Did anyone mention that Carlos Nunez (Jay Hernandez) comes from a different world? Well, he does. Awakened by his hard-working mother, he catches the 5:43 a.m. bus from Boyle Heights just so he can attend the school Nicole despises. He has excellent grades, stars on the football team, and has applied to the U.S. Naval Academy in the hopes of following his dream and becoming a pilot.

These two meet at the Santa Monica Pier, where Nicole, fetching in an orange safety vest, is doing community service picking up trash after being stopped for a DUI. They move in distant circles at the same school, but now they start seeing more of each other. A lot more. Could they actually be falling in love?

Naturally, no one is happy about this development. Not his pals from the neighborhood, not Maddy, who feels dissed, and especially not the hard-working Mrs. Nunez, (Soledad St. Hilaire), who treats her son to a smorgasbord of disapproving looks. Problems multiply for these two like grains of manicured Malibu sand. Whoever said true love was easy has obviously never been to the movies.

As written by Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi and directed by former actor and HBO veteran John Stockwell in his theatrical feature debut, “crazy/beautiful” does have several advantages in dealing with this kind of brazen situation.

First, the film has a good sense of Los Angeles, of the great physical distances involved as well as little things like how bored maids can get and how silly the well-off can be. And it’s come up with a classic plot twist: Nicole’s distant father turns out to be a congressman, one of the few people with power over Carlos’ Annapolis dream.

The movie’s biggest advantage is the relationship between its leads. Their potent chemistry brings the story alive (no easy task), and their quite different career paths parallel and reinforce the film’s experience-meets-innocence story line.

Though still a teenager herself, Dunst has an impressive list of credits, including “Interview With the Vampire,” “Little Women” and “Wag the Dog.” She brings skill and a surprising amount of convincing emotion to the uncharacteristic role of the troubled, self-destructive minx.

This is Jay Hernandez’s feature debut, but he seems unfazed by his beginner’s status. Behind a great smile is both an appealing gravity and that rarest of qualities, charismatic decency. You never wonder why Dunst’s character is attracted to his, or why they want to stay together.

Most interestingly, “crazy/beautiful” is at heart an earnest, sweet-natured film that believes in both its preposterous plot and in Hollywood’s ability to solve any problem before the credits roll. It seems to understand, as its intended audience may not, that these wayward kids, their posing to the contrary, are considerably less sophisticated than they pretend. “We’re not troublemakers, we’re innocents,” one girl says. She thinks she’s kidding, but “crazy/beautiful” knows it’s the truth.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for mature thematic material involving teens, drug and alcohol content, sexuality, and language. Times guidelines: The sexuality pushes to the edge of the PG-13 line.

‘crazy/beautiful’

Kirsten Dunst: Nicole Oakley

Jay Hernandez: Carlos Nunez

Lucinda Jenney: Courtney

Taryn Manning: Maddy

Rolando Molina: Hector

Bruce Davison: Tom Oakley

Released by Touchstone Pictures. Director John Stockwell. Producers Mary Jane Ufland & Harry J. Ufland, Rachel Pfeffer. Executive producer Guy Riedel. Screenplay Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi. Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut. Editor Melissa Kent. Costumes Susan Matheson. Music Paul Haslinger. Production design Maia Javan. Art director Tom Meyer. Set decorator Maria Nay. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

In general release.