Sitting through Cruel Intentions brings to mind the Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats commercial. You know, the one that features a little kid standing there in a parent’s clothes, holding a cereal bowl, saying how it brings out the kid in you.

Watching young actors playing roles designed for adults in this movie becomes laughable. While my eyes rolled around at the inept performances, I heard mocking laughs from the audience at the campy dialogue. Based on their reaction, it’s apparent I am not alone in my derision.

Cruel Intentions is yet another movie adaptation of the French novel, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." I’m not sure the director, Roger Kumble, understands the storyline, at least not as he depicts it. One gets the feeling that someone instead substituted a script from "Beverly Hills 90210." The incest, drug use, and sex is there for all to see; unfortunately, the mean spirited characters become downright depressing to watch, especially when intended for a teenage audience.

We follow the exploits of prep school senior Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe), a trust fund baby from Manhattan. He has a running bet with his obnoxious stepsister, Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Sebastian has to bed the guileless headmaster’s daughter (Reese Witherspoon) before the beginning of the next school term. If he succeeds, Kathryn will sleep with Sebastian. If he fails, Kathryn gets to keep Sebastian’s 1956 Jaquar convertible.

Now doesn’t that description sound inviting to pay money to see?

As a film critic, it dismays me to see what has now become a movie a week aimed at teenage audiences that glorifies the worst of human behavior under the guise of "entertainment." Robert H. Bork in "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" writes that "American popular culture is in a free fall, with the bottom not yet in sight." After watching Cruel Intentions, it is obvious to me that Mr. Bork is dead on right in his assessment.