Paul Andrews Poison Ivy is set in Los Angeles where Sylvie Cooper (Sara Gilbert) has been summoned to the principal's office at school for phoning in a bomb threat to her father's television station, there she meets & talks to the mysterious & alluring Ivy (Drew Barrymore). Almost complete opposites the mild mannered & unadventurous Sylvie & the overt & sexually active Ivy strike up a firm relationship & quickly become best friends, Ivy practically moves into Sylvie's giant mansion where her suicidal mother Georgie (Cheryl Ladd) is very ill with emphysema. Ivy starts to take control of the Cooper's lives, Ivy starts to seduce Sylvie's rich father Daryl (Tom Skerritt) & begins to rip the Cooper family apart...Co-written & directed by Katt Shea I have to say that I thought Poison Ivy was a really limp thriller that offered no surprises or genuine tension, why exactly has it spawned three sequels & counting? I suppose the biggest problem with Poison Ivy is the lethargic & uninvolving script that has wafer thin character's you don't care about sleepwalk through the film. There's no passion here, no excitement, nothing to get the pulse racing, there are no big twists or turns & the entire thing is very predictable. It's never clear why Ivy targets the Cooper's, why she befriends Sylvie (before she finds out her dad's mega rich), nothing about Ivy's background is ever mentioned other than she lived with an Aunt & quite why Ivy wanted to ruin a good thing by wrecking the career of Daryl, killing Georgie & betraying Sylie is a complete mystery to me, I mean she had been all but adopted by the Cooper's as part of the family so why ruin it with no obvious benefit other than breaking a family up & making everyone hate her. With no background on Ivy & no apparent source of motivation it's hard to care to be quite honest. The sacking of Daryl from his job gets one short scene that feels like an afterthought & didn't seem to affect the story that much at all. Then there's the slow pace, things only start to pick up towards the end & it's not until past the hour mark when things turn really nasty & by then the films almost over. There's some poor attempts at psychology as Sylvie has to deal with her ill mother complete with ghostly hallucinations, there's the issue of peer pressure, betrayal, the idea that family is the most important thing in life & teenage rebellion but it's all just padding with little thought or effort going into it. I mean if the most extreme thing Ivy does to Sylvie for the first hour is pamper her dog too much then you know your in trouble.I must admit that I found Poison Ivy really tiresome to watch on a visual level as well, the opening scene of Ivy swinging through the air where she flicks her hair away from her face looks like it belongs in a cheap shampoo commercial. None of it is erotic or sexy & simply dressing Drew Barrymore up in a few tight outfits doesn't cut it, the sex scenes are tame & I am pretty sure Barrymore got a body double. There's one breast shot & one naked male butt & that's your lot. Personally I didn't find Barrymore attractive in this at all, her shallow pointless character & wooden acting combined to send me to sleep rather than send shivers down my spine. There's no violence to speak of & even the 'Unrated' version doing the rounds on DVD is very tame by todays standards as teen flicks such as American Pie (1999) & The Hangover (2009) are far more explicit.With a supposed budget of about $3,000,000 this flopped at the box-office & you can see why, there's nothing here other than for Drew Barrymore fans & considering this was one of her first films she probably didn't have many at the time. The acting is pretty poor, I thought Barrymore was very wooden with no menace or sexuality about her performance at all while Tom Skerritt looks bored.Poison Ivy is a terrible erotic thriller that is neither erotic or thrilling in any way as far as I am concerned, a real damp squib of a limp wristed film that delivers nothing. Followed by Poison Ivy II (1996), Poison Ivy: The New Seduction (1997) & Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008).

Ozzy2000 Drew Barrymore plays Ivy a young teenager who befriends a dysfunctional girl from a wealthy dysfunctional family. Drew comes across as a far too innocent type to be a scheming seductress who lures her friends father (Tom Skerrit) into a pedophilia relationship whilst causing havoc to her friend and her mother.This film did have its moments of intrigue and suspense. Fans of Drew Barrymore may find it somewhat entertaining. The Lolita theme and teen angst aspects will no doubt attract a wider audience.I give it three stars as Drew manages well to uphold her family acting dynasty.

gcd70 This film, claimed to be a "Basic Instinct" meets "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", is a big disappointment. There is no real storyline evident, just an idea that seems to have been given about fifteen minutes work. This is a Virginia Andrews style plot, but it just does not work. Not only is it incoherent, it jumps from one episode to the next and never pieces itself together or finds direction. And the characters are poorly developed, leaving the viewer caring less about what happens to them.Barrymore is watchable, but the film is a tease as it doesn't deliver the promised sensuality.Friday, August 14, 1992 - Village Centre Melbourne

jamiecostelo58 Poison Ivy simply tells the story of a young girl who definitely gets what she wants and even resorts to murder if needs be. All four of the main characters you can develop some feeling for, and you could even feel sorry for Drew Barrymore's Ivy, although I did feel as if sometimes some characters were simply failing to believe what was pretty obvious to everyone else.An 18-year-old Barrymore shines in this role, and Cheryl Ladd is also very convincing.A young Leonardo Di Caprio makes an appearance in a perfectly watchable (but also rather short) film, with good direction from the relatively unknown Katt Shea.