Legacy

There’s little doubt that Legacy quickly reveals itself to be as vacuous and mindless as its central characters, as the film has been infused with an egregiously lighthearted and eye-rollingly silly sensibility that proves effective in transforming it into an unusually tedious piece of work. Director Irving Rothberg – working from Jason Dudek and Samantha Silver’s screenplay – offers up an endeavor that possesses all the style and substance of a third-rate movie-of-the-week, with the almost impossibly thin storyline exacerbated by an emphasis on excessively broad supporting characters (ie a pair of hopelessly bumbling security guards). The film – which follows three bubble-headed Omega Kappa sisters (Haylie Duff’s Lana, Madeline Zima’s Zoey, and Monica Lo’s Mai) as they conspire to do away with an undesirable “legacy” pledge (Kate Albrecht’s Katie) – boasts an opening half that transpires almost entirely within the confines of an absolutely interminable sorority party, where virtually every character is ultimately painted as a suspect in Katie’s mysterious demise. This is followed by a series of interrogation sequences that are astounding in their incompetence, as Rothberg’s decision to stress exceedingly juvenile comedic elements – ie Tom Green’s painfully over-the-top turn as a clinically insane detective – will surely test the patience of even the film’s target demographic of indiscriminating 12-year-olds.

* out of ****