Pretty Persuasion is a dark comedy written by Skander Halim and directed by Marcos Siega (Veronica Mars, The Vampire Diaries).  It’s about a group of girls at an upscale private school (Evan Rachel Wood, Adi Schnall, Elisabeth Harnois) who accuse their teacher (Ron Livingston) of abusing them.  But the leader of the group might have a secret plan in store.  Rounding out the cast is James Woods as Evan Rachel Wood’s character’s coked up father, Selma Blair as the teacher’s wife, and Jane Krakowski as a lesbian local news reporter who is breaking the story.  Check out the trailer below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj7llsqKc64[/youtube]

So besides some not so great cinematography and low budget production values, this is a pretty solid movie.  It’s definitely funny and has lots of big laughs.  Selma Blair’s part is very small but in her one main scene she really brings it.  Evan Rachel Wood is great as the scheming Kimberly.  However the acting drops to almost laughable during the dramatic scenes.  I don’t know if this was intentional, or maybe even perhaps brought on by the poor cinematography (an average performance can be made or broken depending on how the scene is lit).

In a way this movie reminded me tonally of Cry_Wolf, which is a great suspense film disguised as a horror film, and Pretty Persuasion is a great comedy disguised as a drama.  This is great for some laughs, but like I said the drama doesn’t really stand up and at the end becomes totally out of balance with the comedy.

The writing is the real star of this film though.  It’s smart and clever and important plot points are constantly unfolding without you realizing them until later.

Overall I recommend this film as a comedy, but not if you’re in the mood for something more serious.