Set in Michigan in the mid-Seventies (where they teach Henry James's Portrait of a Lady to high schoolers!), this tells of the extreme form of protest taken by the five blond Lisbon sisters to the repressive no-dating policy of their terminally square parents (James Woods and an almost unrecognizable Kathleen Turner, going the way of Shelley Winters and Shirley Knight). Actually, the title alone tells of the extreme form of protest taken, and the rest of it doesn't have a lot to add, apart from some embarrassing period clothes and a "satirical" color scheme of drab browns -- extended illogically even to the homecoming Cadillac. Sofia Coppola's feature directing debut is no less awkward -- flatfooted, lead-footed, two-left-footed -- than was her featured performance in The Godfather, Part III. (Though perhaps the awkward adolescent performances here -- once past Kirsten Dunst -- make her own look not so bad in retrospect.) One wonders whether the movie would ever have got made -- or, the next hurdle, ever have got released -- if the filmmaker were not Don Coppola's daughter. One wonders further whether it could have got made and released by anyone but an indebted Paramount Studio. With Josh Hartnett, Scott Glenn, Danny DeVito. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd