Americans travelling abroad have a tendency to forget their place in a foreign country. There are things that common sense tells you not to do, like messing with drugs. Soldiers with guns pointed at you will help jar your memory.

That’s the fate which befalls two Ohio high school graduates in Thailand in the new movie, Brokedown Palace. How the two, Alice (Claire Danes of TV’s "My So-Called Life") and Darlene (British actress Kate Beckinsale) end up in that country is a mystery to me. Under the guise of taking a post-graduation trip to Hawaii, bad girl Alice talks Miss Goody-two-shoes Darlene into changing the tickets to Bangkok. Say what? That’s quite a bizarre plot twist, considering most senior trips around here only get as far as Galveston.

Unhappy with their $6 per night fleabag motel, Alice talks Darlene into sneaking into a first rate hotel to use the pool. They order drinks and charge them to someone’s room. When their hoax is discovered, a charming Aussie named Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine) comes to the rescue.

Nick makes a pass at Alice, but finally hits it off with Darlene. He offers them two airline tickets for a daylong trip to Hong Kong. Lo and behold, heroin is found in their luggage. Not too smart.

The authorities dupe Darlene into signing a confession. Before the girls know it, they are both sentenced to 33 years each in prison, facetiously nicknamed "brokedown palace." It’s up to the expatriate American lawyer "Yankee Hank" Green (Bill Pullman) to spring them loose.

Last year’s Return to Paradise comes from the same genre, Americans incarcerated in a Third World prison, only that one had some meat on its bones. Its story wrestled with some major moral and legal conflicts.

On the other hand, the script of Brokedown Palace is superficial at best. After one year in prison, Alice and Darlene look none worse for the wear other than having a bad hairdo and unpolished nails. The experience instead seems more like a major inconvenience to the two, and their coming to grips with reality isn’t all that convincing. Their dilemma seems watered down and not very compelling.