Alicia Silverstone stars in True Crime in which she plays a Catholic school girl about to graduate who has an intense interest in criminology. In a more innocent time she would have been cast as Nancy Drew.

One thing in those Nancy Drew novels and also with the Hardy Boys the juvenile sleuths never went after criminals whose mental states were in question. If you can recall the kids going after a sex criminal so be it, I sure can't. Takes a whole different kind of perspective in dealing with that. A theme that should have been more clearly developed but wasn't in the film.

During the course of the investigation she starts looking at a stranger hanging around where her school girl friends go. It turns out to be Kevin Dillon who is close to graduating the police academy. The two turn into an R rated Nancy Drew and Ted Nickerson. But it certainly doesn't end that way.

I think the roles were superficially drawn here and the players not given direction enough so they were left to their own devices. This had the potential to be better than it is.

Mary Giordano (Alicia Silverstone) is a smart Catholic school girl obsessed with true crimes. She goes to school with her sister Vicki (Marla Sokoloff) and best friend Liz McConnell (Tara Subkoff). Police detective Jerry Guinn (Bill Nunn) is her mentor following her dead father's footsteps. A fellow student Kathleen Donlevy is killed by who turns out to be a serial killer. She investigates with the help of police cadet Tony Campbell (Kevin Dillon).

Mary is a darker teenage Nancy Drew. That has potential and it's interesting to dip her toe into sexual tension. However I wish it's not played up as erotica and it's too broadly done. The murder case is relatively uninspired. It's so uninspired that they investigate a traveling carnival. The actors are pretty good but there are some really clunky lines. I don't like the poorly done dream sequences. Going back to the carnival is bad enough. I don't know how she could still hang on to that carnival ride after being knocked unconscious. This is a borderline movie but I have to go a slightly negative.

Alicia Silverstone (pre-"Clueless") plays a modern-day crime-obsessed teenager attempting to solve the brutal slaying of a local girl. Pat Verducci wrote and directed this B-flick, which isn't especially well-made but is however surprisingly serious-minded in regards to its leading character. Silverstone is appealing and successful in carving out an interesting young woman here, despite the picture's kitschy undermining. The supporting cast (including Kevin Dillon and Michael Bowen) isn't bad, though the violence in the last act goes overboard. Not a cheesy camp-fest, but nothing exceptionally memorable either. *1/2 from ****