• Wide Release
• Director: Irving Rothberg
• Written by: Jason Dudek, Samantha Silver
• Running Time: 90 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: Haylie Duff, Margo Harshman, Madeline Zima, Kate Albrecht, Brett Claywell, Monica Lo, Jane Sibbett, Tom Green, Laura Ashley Innes, Donnell Rawlings, Kelly Frye, Randal Reeder, Rachel Melvin, Ian Nelson, Jillian Murray, Laura Ortiz, Katie Chonacas, Katrina Begin, Heather Hogan, Marisa Guterman, Alicia Ziegler, Marisa Guterman, Taylor Hoover, Matt Gallini, Bret Ernst, Brendan Miller, Shani Pride

First time director Irving Rothberg’s horror-comedy “Legacy” (aka “Pretty Little Devils”) looks good and, at the start, it drives along pretty comfortably that is until one realizes that they’ve been coasting on fumes and there’s nary a gas station in sight. With the potential to be a truly potent black comedy, this film instead clunks along to its obvious and anticipated climax and the viewers are left scratching their head why they even took this ride in the first place. There's nothing particularly insightful with this formulaic film written by Samantha Silver and Jason Dudek and none of the comedy works, not even when its trying really hard, making for a mostly forgettable experience. Definitely not worthy of some of the names that are attached to the project.

Rush week at Omega Kappa (OK) has Big Sister Lana Stevens (Haylie Duff) and her sorority sisters Zoey Martin (Madeline Zima) and Mai (Monica Lo) weeding through a new crop of pledges, specifically ones that fit their idealized post modern Paris Hilton-esque image of beauty i.e. great figures, perfect teeth, hair etc. – class and brains, however, are not required. Lana has her eyes on a specific pledge, cute blonde Emily Barton (Laura Ashley Innes), because, apparently, they are classmates who’ve spent many hours together practicing their “oooohs” or something. A snag arises when a big contributor and an Omega Kappa “legacy” Catherine Whittington (Jane Sibbett) arrives with her slightly overweight, geeky daughter Katie (Kate Albrecht), in tow. She wants her daughter to be an OK however the girls, appalled at the sight of Katie, have no intent on letting her join their sorority and even suggest she check out some other houses on campus. “Oh please, I started that line,” Catherine tells Lana. She, with a certain oily charm, lets the Big Sister know that she’s playing hardball, and threatens to pull funding if the girls don’t take her daughter in. Sadly, this puts Emily on the outs since she was going to slide into that vacant “legacy” spot – now to be taken by Catherine's frumpy daughter. Worried about their image, the girls arrange a strategy to make Katie’s experience at the house absolute hell -- one that will result in Katie opting out all on her own.

Things take a rather dour but expected turn during the later Omega Kappa pledge party which occurs conveniently just hours after Katie lands at their doorstep. Before the end of the night Katie will be murdered and the girls, in a panic, will attempt to hide the body from authorities, something so pointless that it feels entirely like a device to get us into the next act. We aren’t dealing with rocket scientists here so it comes as hardly a shock when they are caught and arrested by a pair of booze hound security cops. From there it’s up to a pair of horny dimwit detectives and their suicidal loose-cannon boss, played by a manic Tom Green, to figure who killed Katie and why.

Coming in the wake of thoughtful black comedies like “Mean Girls”, “Heathers” and “Jaw Breaker”, “Legacy” is so blasé and lacklustre in its execution that it, despite a terrific cast, doesn’t deliver much ‘black’ or ‘comedy’. Rothberg is content to only go halfway and then pull back, allowing situations that could be rife in dark humour to simply fizzle out. When Tom Green arrives an hour into the film, I kind of expected (or wanted) him to deliver a hilariously scathing commentary on the blank slate that were these three girls, instead we get a comic actor sending up another bad cop/dumb prisoner interrogation scene, with nothing remotely original or interesting added. What was the point? Regarding the mystery of figuring out who killed Katie, well, there’s not much mystery, at least to those in the audience gifted with the ability to pay attention. Here’s a hint; there’s only one other really well known actress in the cast, and she seems to drift in and out of the film for much of it in a fairly inconsequential role. That’s usually a dead giveaway.

Most attempts at dark humour arise from the girls playing up Albrecht’s weight issues or her ugliness, both of which are merely implied. She’s far from overweight and she’s far from unattractive, so many of the vicious barbs the girls throw her way ring hollow, which, itself, might be part of the joke. Also, I found it hard to buy into the notion that someone as contemptuous as Catherine Whittington might actually have spawned someone as sweet and thoughtful as Katie. She’s the sole bright spot in an otherwise nasty film. This seems to underline a huge flaw I had with “Legacy” overall in that Kate Albrecht (2004's "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement") has etched out such an enjoyable goofy character that is easily the most interesting of the lot, and when she is dispatched, in a rather bathetic style I might add, it drags the film down wholly. The follow-up interrogation sequence, aided partially by the comedically venerable Tom Green, only manages to slog along before running headlong into a wall of nothingness. A comedic dead pit is the best way to describe this sequence, which doesn’t even try to do anything but follow existing formulas. It relies primarily on the girls filling in the blanks while said blanks play out on screen – think CSI folks. The more the blanks are filled in, the more we realize what a cool person Katie really was while at the same time realizing how uncool the three protagonists are – gee, isn’t it nice that we get to spend another thirty minutes with them? Green pulls an old chestnut out to end the whole thing when he says something along the lines of ‘put a tail on them.’ Dear god. Another scene involving a pair of dimwitted campus security cops nearly pushes the film into “Three Stooges” territory. Why?

Haylie Duff (1998's "Addams Family Reunion") has long attempted to get out from behind the shadow of her more famous sister Hillary, and she might have actually succeeded with “Legacy” had the film been willing to sharpen its teeth or at least better craft its characters. Haylie, donning an ugly blonde wig, does her best Rachel McAdams from “Mean Girls” performance, and is reasonably good. Sadly, she fails to give her character any real depth and her single moment of conjecture feels false, maybe because it was designed to. This is not a very defined character. She’s not nasty enough to totally hate and she’s not affable enough to like, so we're stuck somewhere in between with her. The scene when she tucked Katie into bed, I had a sense that maybe we’d get a glimpse of something resembling a person, instead, it never happens -- everything pulls back. Her constant back and forth spat with her horny lunkhead boyfriend Jeff (Brett Claywell), who has gotten quite rich videotaping their sex, is far from an interesting plotline. More interesting is Hong Kong star Monica Lo (2002's "Hidden Enforcers") and her unwillingness to admit that she’s in love with another girl, fearing the repercussions it could bring from her conformist homophobic tribe. Monica in her first American film is very good. It’s interesting to note that spends much of her screen time making out with other young girls. Madeline Zima (1997's "'Til There Was You") as the sex-obsessed and least likeable character Zoey is totally wasted in a silly super one-dimensional role.

Margo Harshman (2008's "College Road Trip") as Nina, I have to admit, is the best casting decision of the film. I remember seeing Harshman on “The Even Stevens Movie” a few years ago and thinking to myself, there’s something creepy about that girl. Seeing her in this role, in a condensed version of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous villain, she’s brilliant. The film’s ending, which is actually quite chilling, manages to work mainly because of Harshman. This is a talented young lady. Tom Green’s single scene which involves the actor whipping out his gun and bad mouthing the other officer’s interrogation techniques, fails to be all that funny. I get the sense from watching the film that the director secured Tom for a day and wanted to milk as much screen time from him that he could, even allowing him to improvise some of his scenes. The character sways back and forth between deadly serious and overtly silly. In the end, he's totally irrelevant and could have been left out of the film entirely with no impact on the narrative whatsoever. I can understand why a director would want to use Tom Green (2001's "Freddy Got Fingered"), I just don't understand why he wasn't given something more substantial to play with. If they'd chosen to drop all allusions to comedy and have Green play this scene totally deadpan straight, I think it could have been something else altogether -- something that, in its own way, would have evoked true satire.

Not a great film but an okay time waster.