hall895 Alicia Campbell is a good girl. Coming from a poor family this sweet, hard-working girl is focused on her education, determined to make something of her life. Hadley Ashton is a bad girl. Coming from a rich family this cold, bitchy girl doesn't want to work, she expects to have life handed to her on a silver platter. The two girls attend one of those colleges where the college runs the town. The college president makes this perfectly clear when the acting sheriff turns up on campus to investigate how sweet little Alicia ended up comatose in a hospital bed, fighting for her life. The president makes it very clear that he expects there to be no actual investigating done in this investigation. But Sheriff Artie Bonner keeps digging.The movie unfolds largely in flashbacks as we see the oh-so-innocent Alicia lose her innocence which leads to her potentially losing her life. She and Hadley are paired up on a school project. Alicia is a social nobody, Hadley is one of the campus queens. Hadley and her rich, snotty friends take Alicia under their wing. Alicia starts to change. Not so innocent after all perhaps. Drugs and sex, and more drugs and more sex and what exactly has Alicia gotten herself into? Eventually she overdoses on cocaine. Accident? Hadley and her friends would like you to believe that. The college president would definitely like you to believe that. The sheriff does not believe that.The movie sets Hadley and her two main cohorts, Sidney and Julianne, up as potential suspects, giving them each motivations for perhaps wanting to be rid of Alicia. Some other fringe characters get involved too but the focus is clearly on this gang of three. Truth be told this is not a particularly mysterious mystery. Those watching will probably put all the pieces of the puzzle together long before the sheriff does. The hint of obviousness drains away some of the drama but that doesn't necessarily make New Best Friend a bad movie. It's far from the greatest thing you'll ever see but it's reasonably compelling. Trashy but entertainingly so. Mia Kirshner turns in a very good performance in playing Alicia. The character evolves, not necessarily for the best, and Kirshner nails the transformation. You believe her as the sweet, innocent girl we first meet. And you believe her as the girl who ultimately proves to be something else entirely. The rest of the cast is not quite up to Kirshner's standard. Meredith Monroe is a little flat in playing ice queen Hadley, neither Dominique Swain nor Rachel True are particularly memorable in playing our other two would-be murderesses. And playing the sheriff Taye Diggs just appears to be going through the motions. A flawed movie to be sure but there are enough good things here, Kirshner most notably, to make it a decent viewing experience. Not a movie you'd regret missing if you didn't see it. But not a movie you'd regret seeing if you did.

insomniac_rod Feels like "Cruel Intentions" but spicier. Mia Kirshner was the reason for me to watch the movie. I'm in lust with her. She's physically perfect. Her sexy acting in this movie is great. She even has a steamy but brief sex scene. I got all the Mia I wanted.I terms of plot, it's very decent. It's one of those teen intriguing thrillers that deals with revenge, envy, sex, etc. The things you are used to live in high school. Heck, even a cop gets in the middle.Taye Digss's accent has become some sort of cult classic. I found this movie to be morbid but interesting. That's enough to fit in the teenage 2000's cinema. Don't expect a great plot but it should please your hunger for the "Cruel Intentions" type of movies.

guyfromjerzee Please keep in my mind that I'm not classifying this as an artistically brilliant film. I'm not even classifying it as an artistically competent film. The film has "amateur" written all over it. From the dialogue to the plotting to...hell, the blocking of the actors. "New Best Friend" doesn't contain anything you wouldn't see in your average direct-to-video flick. I'm pretty sure the film went direct to video. I remember seeing the preview for the movie years ago, and for some reason it still stuck in my mind. I thought to myself, This looks like a direct-to-video flick, but...wait a minute, Taye Diggs is in it. I have no idea why Taye decided to take part in the flick. The film was released several years after he hit it big with "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." As you can imagine, he's probably the best actor in the film. The rest of the actors aren't bad either. Some of the acting is slightly hammy, but for the most part the performances didn't really take me out of the film. I haven't seen Mia Kirshner in many movies, but I liked her a lot in "Exotica." Not to mention I find her quite sexy. She's not what Hollywood would consider a "classic beauty," but I find her to be very gorgeous. It was cool to see Meredith Monroe play a bad girl. She played a much more innocent character on "Dawson's Creek." The plot is predictable and not much different than one you'd see in an average teeny-bopper soap opera. But what can I say? I was intrigued. It's good, trashy entertainment. Mia Kirshner's character goes through one of those only-in-the-movies transformations. She starts out a frumpy law student, who wears little makeup and has no fashion sense. All it takes is one wild party and one makeover from her new girlfriends, and viola! She's a drug-addicted slut! But what would a trashy teen melodrama be without implausible moments like that? The ending, to my surprise, doesn't contain a single twist. The writer/director didn't even attempt to make this film unpredictable.If you're looking to watch a deep, thought-provoking flick...this is NOT the film to see. But if you're simply looking to kill an hour and 30 minutes with good ol' trashy melodrama, "New Best Friend" is the film to see. Hey, let's face it. Every once in a while, you just need to kick back, check your brain at the door, and watch trashy flicks like these. It's fun after a hard day's work. The fact that almost all the actresses in the flick are hotties doesn't hurt either.

Johnny Beffet I would have to disagree on most of the user comments on this movie. Most insist it is a piece of trash, not worth viewing. And yes perhaps they're right about the trashy part but in my humble opinion, New Best Friend is in the same kind of league as 90210 - entertaining trash that as much as we hate to admit it, we actually find ourselves engrossed in.Yes, the story is unoriginal and the script poor but the performances by the key actors are good enough to keep viewers interested. Mia Kirsher (Exotica, The Crow:City of Angels) delivers a stellar performance despite the bad material she was given to work with. An actress of her calibre should be choosing better parts in significantly better movies but I'm willing to forgive her for making one bad decision (but that's only because personally I didn't find New Best Friend a complete waste of my time). Meridith Monroe, Dominique Swain and Rachel True are all effective in their roles however one bad performance has to come from Taye Diggs as the officer in charge of investigating Alicia's (Kirsher) overdose which has suspicious circumstances. Diggs usually turns in fine performances but in New Best Friend he just looks bored. Perhaps that's due to the lack of good material he had to work with.Overall I found New Best Friend to be an entertaining movie. Sure there was a lot of things wrong with it and it certainly won't go down as one of my favourite films of the year but it succeeds for what it is - great trash!