As Prozac Nation finally surfaces, premiering "without fanfare" on the Starz! cable channel, Slate's Dana Stevens pauses to reflect on the reasons for its (only mild, she says) badness:

Granted, Prozac Nation is an extremely silly movie, but let's face it: self-dramatizing middle-class girls who stay up for days on end writing Harvard Crimson articles about Lou Reed ("I feel his cold embrace, his sly caress") are inherently silly people. [...] On her first day at Harvard, Lizzie sits down on a cardboard box to strategize with her roommate about their college personae: "We'll be like these beautiful literary freaks ... brilliant and dark and sexy." As they laugh and puff reflectively at their cigarettes, she adds in a sardonic voiceover, "The trouble is, I was deadly serious."