The challenge in watching this witless, would-be comedy isn't finding what went wrong; it's finding anything that goes right. The problems begin with an embarrassing script, loading every conceivable coming-of-age cliché on a set of characters overburdened with contrived eccentricities: Winona Ryder is a Jewish teen obsessed with Catholicism; younger sister Christina Ricci wants to swim the English Channel; and Cher is
well, simply Cher. The lame attempts at wacky humor, conveyed almost entirely through Ryder's superfluous voice-over narration (a sure sign of weak screen writing), are further undermined by Richard Benjamin's lackluster direction, and in answer the actors pitch their performances to the edge of hysteria (the otherwise reliable Bob Hoskins is especially irritating). Every tired convention of early '60s nostalgia (the music, the fashions, JFK's assassination) is dusted off and put on display, and every predictable crisis in the formula plot occurs right on cue.
