Sex spies

In Just Looking, 14-year-old Lenny (Ryan Merriman) has only one ambition as he begins summer vacation after his freshman year in high school: Before school begins again in September, he wants to see a man and a woman having sex. It’s not an easy thing to do in the best of times, but in 1954, when Just Looking takes place, it’s just about impossible; Lenny is reduced to spying (unsuccessfully) on his mother (Patti LuPone) and his obese stepfather (Richard V. Licata) in their cramped Bronx apartment.

Perhaps as a result of his midnight voyeurism (his parents are too repressed to say anything out loud), Lenny finds himself shipped off for the summer to live with his aunt and uncle “out in the country"—that is, in suburban Queens, where Uncle Phil (Peter Onorati) owns an Italian delicatessen. Working in the deli, Lenny makes the acquaintance of another boy, John (Joseph Franquinha), who invites him to join the neighborhood “sex club.” The club turns out to be strictly a discussion group (as opposed to a workshop) with two local girls who know more about the subject than anyone Lenny knew back in the Bronx. Lenny also meets Hedy Collier (Gretchen Mol), a gorgeous local nurse whose flirtatious friendliness gives Lenny a focus for his unfulfilled ambition. Now he knows exactly whom he wants to see having sex before the summer is out.

Just Looking was written by Marshall Karp. According to the film’s press materials, Karp started out in advertising, writing commercials for Coca-Cola and Paine Webber; he then moved into television, writing and producing sitcoms. Just Looking, his first screenplay, shows the marks of that experience. It’s slick and amiable, adhering faithfully to the standard coming-of-age-in-the-1950s formula. Karp cleverly salts the formula with a few surprises in the plot—not enough to disturb the comfortable rhythm of the formula, but just enough to keep the clichés from becoming tiresome. The film has a familiar ring to it. Whether the familiarity comes from its similarity to our own adolescence or to other movies of this type is probably too close to call—but I have my suspicions.

Jason Alexander directs the film with an actor’s affection for good sitcom shtick, and his cast gives him no less and no more than he seems to expect. Merriman, in particular, is directed to give the young hero a sunny, fresh-faced enthusiasm that lends a kind of innocence to a character who is (not to put too fine an edge on it) a Peeping Tom in training. Far be it from Karp or Alexander to suggest that Lenny’s summertime obsession is anything but the innocent curiosity of puberty; they’ll leave the shadings and subtlety of such thoughts to films like Blue Velvet and American Beauty.

Just Looking skates along on the surface of its own story. Nearly every character is revealed to us whole and complete at first glance; what we learn in their first minute on screen is all we ever know about them. Karp is so consistent with this TV-skit style of character development that when he tries to show us another side to someone, as he does with Richard V. Licata as Lenny’s hated stepfather, the scene has a contrived feel to it; the world Karp creates is not one that lends itself to nuance or ambiguity.

Within that limitation, Karp and Alexander have to lean heavily on the personal charm of their actors. With that in mind, it was probably wise of them to keep Patti LuPone’s scenes to a minimum; she’s a bit bigger than life, with a Broadway brassiness that could ruffle the aw-shucks nostalgia of the film if she were given too much screen time. Other performers shape themselves more readily to the dimensions of Karps’ script. Merriman carries the film conscientiously, and his moments with Gretchen Mol (a winning screen presence whose career has perhaps suffered from her striking resemblance to Charlize Theron) are strong, though Karp and Alexander do tend to stamp Big Scene all over them.

Just Looking covers familiar ground, but at least it does so with economy and reliable professionalism.