Down to You

Latest Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicle stalls at on-ramp.

A pleasant addition to the time-honored genre of terminally cute youth romance movies, roughly equivalent to staring at a saccharine greeting card for a while.

The best the makers of Down to You can hope for is that girls in their early teens--clearly the film's target audience--will be so carried away by its charismatic stars that they'll overlook the film's various flaws.

The highlights of the movie are a great song, Sam Phillips' "I Need Love,'' which comes at the end, and Stiles' affecting crying scene.

Stinko movies often unwittingly critique themselves -- and the brain-dead romantic comedy Down to You (which Miramax understandably didn't screen in advance for critics) is no exception.

The confusion it mistakes for true soul-searching is about as realistic a look at the politics of youthful attraction as one of those "Did somebody say McDonald's?" commercials is a look at mainstream American family values. Did somebody say McCheese?

A disaster: dull, predictable, at times cringe-worthy.