“Played by Erika Christensen ('Traffic'), Cate is sweet and passive, while the Heath of Mike Vogel ('Grounded for Life') is more whiny than wild. Isabel, played by Katherine Heigl ('Roswell') steals the movie as a sexy, scheming high-school Alpha girl. (Best moment: Isabel takes Heath to live with her at a fancy girl's boarding school dorm, where she happens to keep a small recording studio by her bed.)
The casting is a problem. Both Ms. Christensen and Mr. Vogel are blond, well fed and even beefy -- they look less like tormented lovers than evidence that European fears about American genetically modified foods may not be entirely groundless.
Mr. Vogel's bland surfer looks make it all the harder for him to convincingly play a brutish lowlife who embarrasses Cate when she is with the rich, sophisticated Lintons. In scruffy hair and faded jeans, he looks as if he belongs there more than she does. A more nuanced actor with a more smoldering, ethnic look would have been more persuasive.
Still, even Emily Brontë would not disagree with one of the lyrics that make Heath a rock superstar: 'Maybe you're better off dead.'”
