Twelve

By focusing the story on a late high school community, the film held out hope that Schumacher would remember his first major directorial achievement, the bravura frat-pack flick St. Elmo's Fire. Unfortunately, however, the septuagenarian director past his creative zenith couldn't find the energy, not to mention that he was apparently no longer able to relate to the transformation of high school communities and their problems. After all, a quarter century has passed since Elmo. Twelve contains virtually every flaw and crutch in the narrative: omniscient voice overs, flashbacks, a huge number of characters who are not sufficiently developed, relationships between characters that are supposed to emerge from one characterization scene, it's not clear by the end what the film is actually about, and whatever starting point you choose in spite of all this comes off as horribly banal. A tragic fail. (2020-02-14)