She's Out of Control

SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL would have done far better in the TV ratings than it did at the box office. It has all the production pluses of national ad campaigns: smart art direction, lighting, and costume design; a catchy mix of old and new rock'n'roll on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL also resembles commercials in that it hopes to appeal to everyone and basically endears itself to no one.

They’ve made a sometimes funny, mostly media-referential movie without much real life; a high-tech, high-pro job that has a glamor-robot feel.

An inspid comedy about Daddy and Daddy's little girl. It's an irksome, one-dimensional sitcom with smut.

Somewhere lurking behind the scenes of She's Out of Control is the germ of a good idea. Despite some funny scenes, the sitcomish treatment of a father's anxiety over his teenage daughter's budding sexuality is mostly shallow and uneven.

She's Out of Control is too insipid to take. [15 Apr 1989, p.E5]

The coarse material, from a screenplay by Seth Winston and Michael J. Nathanson, is roughed up even more by Dragoti's abrasive exaggeration, both of performance (there's a terrifying sequence in which Hicks finally gets her long dreamed-of engagement ring and goes into a frenzy of triumph and delight) and of visual style (visits to the office of sinister shrink Wallace Shawn are filmed in weird expressionist off-angles). [14 Apr 1989, p.D]

She's Out of Control is simultaneously so bizarre and so banal that it's a first: the first movie fabricated entirely from sitcom cliches and plastic lifestyles, without reference to any known plane of reality.