Posted: 09/10/2002

Swimfan

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

This swimmer sinks…

“Well, it wasn’t that bad,” was the best I could muster as my wife and I began to discuss Swimfan, a so-so flick by director-actor John Polson (Siam Sunset, What’s Going on Frank) whose mediocre previous efforts have continued here.

We have a high-school jock who has turned his life around after a bad start to his teenage years only to be befriended, seduced and stalked by a new student at his high school. We see a hint that she has been obsessed with him before she arrives, but have no idea why. We also see that she apparently is a serial stalker, but other than both guys being athletes, there is no connection.

Freddie Prinze look-alike Jesse Bradford (Clockstoppers, Bring It On) is Ben Cronin, the former bad boy turned swimmer, now on the brink of obtaining a college scholarship to Stanford. When he meets Madison Bell, they are the alone in the high school hallway on her first day of school. (Doesn’t anyone show these new kids how to get to class on time?) He helps her open her locker by picking the lock. Who knew such a skill would come in handy? That left us asking, “Is that all it took to create a stalker?”

Later in the day, Cronin almost runs over Ms. Bell in his truck. How did she happen to be crossing the street while he was looking at some hot chick on the side of the road, only to turn back just in time to stop from turning her into hamburger? He offers to give her a ride home in return for almost killing her. Okay, now that she is a stalker, it is so obvious that she would have left her notebook in his truck, knowing he would show up at her house to bring it back, instead of bringing it to school the next day.

To finish off capturing him in her wicked web, she gets him to take her to the school pool building at night so she can watch him swim. I can only assume he has the key to the building, or it was just another lock to pick. Guy in swim trunks, psycho chick: Not very hard to figure out where this is going, and shortly after his first lap, she’s in the water and he’s… in her.

All of this is happening right under the nose of his joined-at-the-hip girlfriend (Sheri Appleby, TV’s “Roswell”), during the week before the swim meet of his life where the scouts from Stanford will see him swim.

It is when Ben decides that thinking with his swim trunks was not such a good idea and that Madison has to be forcefully removed from his life that her psycho side takes over and Ben’s life goes to hell.

Bell is played by Erika Christensen. She was Michael Douglas’s daughter in Traffic and continues to improve as her career moves on. She was very convincing as a psycho, reminding me of some old dates I have known. Another acting highlight was James DeBello, who, when I last saw him, was playing the misogynistic roommate in 100 Girls. In that film he portrayed the A-hole quite well, and here he plays Bell’s slightly askew cousin, who knows more than he lets on. One waste of talent was Dan Hedaya (The Crew, Shaft) as Cronin’s swim coach. Here is an actor who can do comedy and drama so well, but was reduced to the level of yet another stupid adult character in a teen movie. On the technical side of the film, we are constantly forced to look at quick cut close-ups of Christensen while listening to a trite Psycho wanna-be soundtrack, as if we could see her listening to the voices in her head telling her that she must kill the “bad” people. After seeing a few very well shot movies this year (Road to Perdition, One Hour Photo), this was just awful. This summer’s other water-related film, Blue Crush, was much better photographed. That and the many chain-link sized holes in Swimfan’s plot made me unable to stem the tide and just go along for the ride. We were forced to dog paddle along on a river of bad plot twists and complications. Yep, the story just doesn’t hold water. It s(t)inks.

Hank Yuloff is one of our writers in Los Angeles. After this film, he’s considering how to fill in his swimming pool and turn it into a flower bed.

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