'MINI'S FIRST TIME'......WHAT DID ALEC KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? AND WHO CARES?

Mini's First Time (2006)  A DVD of this inconsequential trifle sat buried for years in a pile of movies the BQ accumulated during our decades of video store servitude.....

          And we might have left it there forever had we not stumbled upon a recent news story in which the movie's star, Alec Baldwin engaged in a vituperative tweet battle with one of the movie's producers. (Ah, the wonders of Twitter technology.....where adults can now plunge into the kind of verbal duels they used to have with elementary school playground rivals....)

          Why would these two hurl insults at each other over a decade after the film's release?  Baldwin claims he didn't know his co-star Nikki Reed was only 17 when she played his step-daughter, a wealthy spoiled nymphomaniac teen who seduces.......oh my.....her step-dad, Baldwin. The producer claims he indeed knew, but there's hardly any controversy here since Baldwin and Reed keep their clothes on and any sex between them is only vaguely suggested.

           On the surface a sun-drenched L.A.noir thriller, 'Mini's First Time'  mostly works as a corrosive satire of morally bankrupt La La Land-ers.  Baldwin and Reed, having discovered the joys of stepfather/stepdaughter sex, conspire to mentally destroy the household's third wheel..... Reed's boozy, washed up actress mom (Carrie-Ann Moss). Plying Moss with a steady diet of drug-laced cocktails, their plan to unhinge her enough to qualify for sanitarium lockup goes predictably wrong.....

             We're guessing the idea here was sardonic amusement at the sight of these indolent, debauched, self absorbed West Coast caricatures (including Jeff Goldblum as a preening game show producer) getting exactly what they deserve. Baldwin certainly commits himself to the material, but Reed brings nothing other than a bikini-ready body to her vacant-eyed, scheming sociopath. She thinks merely looking the part of a psychotic Lolita will put the film across. It doesn't.  This story required a real actress to match Baldwin, maybe someone like a young Reese Witherspoon or Amber Tamblyn......Reed's mask-like blankness merely sucks the nasty fun out of the film.

            When it's all over, unveiling a staggeringly  unsurprising plot twist, you wonder why actors like Baldwin and Goldblum even bothered with this movie.......it seems like a criminal waste of their time.  The recent petulant back and forth tweets between Baldwin and the producer are infinitely more entertaining than the film itself.....we'll eke out 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)  For a movie that launched a host of tweets.....it's mostly twaddle.