Coming Soon

Described as American Pie for girls, Coming Soon is a cute, sweet, but often bland and familiar coming-of-age sex comedy. Set in an exclusive New York prep school, where more time is spent in college admission strategies than actually going to class, it's about the quest for the elusive orgasm and true love, in that order. Bonnie Root is a real find as the spunky, naive high school virgin in a hurry to catch up with her worldly best friends (haughty Gaby Hoffmann and moody Tricia Vessey). There's a bit of Clueless tossed in when Root is attracted to a shaggy new-age beatnik and garage band musician (the amiable Ryan Reynolds, looking like a young Val Kilmer), a move her status-conscious classmates find decidedly uncool. The laughs come from easy targets: Mia Farrow as Root's distracted flower child mom, Ryan O'Neal the very image of midlife crisis as her yuppie father with a new young girlfriend (Yasmin Bleeth, laying on the immaturity a little thick), and Spalding Gray the master of understatement as a feel-good career counselor. It's nice to see the sex comedy formula from a girl's perspective, and Colette Burson seems to know her milieu, but it's the girls and their adolescent confusion that make it work. --Sean Axmaker