Eighteen

Michael Raven fesses up to having been "inspired" by the novel "Lolita" when concocting this movie for Metro Interactive, getting his ace screenwriter George Kaplan to flesh out the script for him. But what emerges is a very poor approach to the jail-bait genre, loaded with pretentious dialog and philosophizing assigned to male lead Steven St. Croix in his endless voice-over narration.

St. Croix portrays a novelist, busy banging away at his manual typewriter and simultaneously fantasizing about the subject matter: obsession with a beautiful young woman whose mother has moved next door to him with her offspring in tow. This premise for the movie lets Kaplan and Raven toy with the notion of what is real and what is imaginary (simply in Steven's mind), a ploy that makes for a surprise ending but mere confusion and tedium along the way.

Elizabeth X, a forgotten actress who gave many fine performances two decades ago for Raven's producer here Bud Lee, has a showy NonSex turn as Mildred Cohen (her character name sloppily misspelled as Milred in the closing credits), the mother of the Lolita character named Lainie (played by fresh newcomer Cherry Rain).

Rain's acting is none too good, especially in her monolog late in the movie when she gets mad at step-dad St. Croix. Yes, our humble narrator actually married the annoying Mildred in order to be near her kid Lainie.

The sex scenes are perfunctory and the plot less than scintillating beyond its basics, making "Eighteen" a dull boy. My interest was sustained by an unusual coincidence fostered by Kaplan & Raven: the first names of the characters played by Elizabeth X and St. Croix happen to be the same first names as my mother and myself, and Ms. X's Mildred's last name is ours as well. Adding to this happenstance, my older sister's BFF in childhood was named Lainie.

What are the odds of that coinky-dink?