'Swimfan' drowns in mediocrity

Did you see the trailer for "Swimfan?" Well, if you did, then you've already seen the movie.\nActually, as it turns out, you've seen an entirely more entertaining version of this pathetic teen "Fatal Attraction" rip-off. Really. While the 84-minute film (the filmmakers somehow actually believed it deserved to be that long) seemed to have an identity crisis, the two-and-a-half-minute trailer managed to fit every single plot element into a nice little bite-size package that posed no serious threat to your valuable time. \nThose of us who saw the movie had to endure quite a bit and wasted 84 minutes of our life in the process.\nI didn't need to see the movie to find all this out, but the film basically breaks down like this (for those of you who haven't seen the trailer): high school senior Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford) is a superstar swimmer stud with a cute girlfriend, Amy (Shiri Appleby), and a shady past who has gotten his life back on track by spending time in the pool and playing kissy-face with Amy. That is, until an evil seductress from down south, Madison Bell (Erika Christensen), comes to town and lures the painfully susceptible Ben into some thoughtless underwater nookie.\nWhat Ben doesn't know is that Madison, who has a slight problem with rejection, is a raving loony with homicidal tendencies who begins to unravel the swimmer's life before you can say "breaststroke." The rest is exactly like any other "Fatal Attraction" derivative, just supplemented with every teen thriller cliché and the lamest and most nonsensical "plot twists" that the painfully inept filmmakers could come up with.\nIt's hard to find any redeeming qualities in this entire film. The acting is painfully stale, only poking its infected hand deep inside the gaping wound of a script. Bradford's dramatic abilities extend little beyond opening his mouth and putting a dopey look on his face, and Christensen's inconsistent villain chops are disappointing after her promising turn in "Traffic." The whole thing is a ridiculous and hackneyed bore and should be duly avoided.