91Èȱ¬

If school years are the best of your life, how come so many movies about them dwell upon the miserable times to be had there? From Tom Brown's gloomy schooldays, to what seems like every American high school teen comedy/drama/horror tale, school seems the kind of thing you would like to put behind you as soon as humanly possible.

Much like this film, in a way, which is so slight that a sudden gust of wind might pick it up and carry it where no other critic could do it harm. Jason Biggs, so appealing in "American Pie" is pretty charmless here, as much because his role is so one dimensional as for any real fault on his part. He plays Paul, the small town nice guy who is trying to get on at college but finds himself unable to fit in with his cooler, wealthier peers.

Circumstance throws him together with hip and feisty fellow student Dora Diamond (Suvari), and as he instantly falls in love with her, he also realises he has no chance of winning over someone so unattainable. Not least because she is embroiled in an affair with aloof Professor Alcott (Kinnear), where she is giving more passion than she receives. If only she would see sense and turn to the one guy who is perfect for her, thinks Paul. If only she'd get on with it so we could go home, think the audience.

And so it goes on, spinning towards an inevitable climax like so many soapy suds draining down a plughole. "Loser" seems unfortunately influenced by its prescient title, and manages to make the marginal humour of "Road Trip" seem like a masterpiece by comparison. Writer-director Amy Heckerling proved a skilled enough auteur to eke real humour out of a talking baby in "Look Who's Talking", and made far better school-set tales in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" and "Clueless". Sadly this latest effort is far from fast, and it doesn't have a clue.

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