Jennifer's Body, much like the teenage girls it focuses on, is having an identity crisis -- a wacky mix of pseudo-horror and high school politics, it can't quite decide if it wants to be a satire or just another one of the conventional flicks it is trying to mock.

The film is Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody's second effort since Juno, and has much to satirize but is never quite clear what the target is.

It isn't innovative enough to mock B-horror films or truthful enough to mock high school films, and in the end, it leaves viewers wondering what its point was -- or whether it had one at all.

Jennifer's Body stars Amanda Seyfried as Needy, a mousy wallflower (she has glasses, duh) who for years has been best friends with the prettiest, most popular girl in school, Jennifer (Megan Fox).

Needy's relationship with Jennifer borders on obsessive, and after she follows her friend to a bar one night to see a band (fronted by The O.C.'s Adam Brody), the two friends are caught up in a horrifying mess.

After the bar catches fire, Needy cannot manage to save a traumatized Jennifer from leaving with the band, and then when she returns, her friend has somehow transformed into a teenage-boy-eating creature.

The intrigue for Jennifer's Body was in seeing whether the script could live up to its predecessor, but what sets this film apart from the charming Juno is that the screenwriter's famous "Cody-isms" don't work here. There aren't as many of them, but when there are, they aren't very good (think Juno's cringe-worthy "honest to blog").

It's likely that Cody has lost her touch or that her "teen-speak" just doesn't feel new, but the problem with the dialogue probably rests with the film's leads.

To put it bluntly, Seyfried is no Ellen Page.

Page delivered her Juno lines with ease and nuance, while Seyfried's performance as the film's actual lead is forgettable.

Fox is nothing special, either. Her ditzy, "like"-infused delivery is spot-on at times, but she's nowhere near as deliciously bitchy as Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls. The film tries to distract us from this by constantly reminding us how attractive Jennifer is. Fox is almost uncomfortably pretty, and it's easy to see how a girl like Jennifer could have teenage boys wrapped around her finger, so the endless shots of her walking in slow motion down a hallway or getting out of a lake dripping wet seem useless.

Nowhere in the film is this more apparent than in the much-hyped bedroom kiss between Fox and Seyfried.

The scene is gratuitous and adds nothing to the plot.

The endless shots of the girls' "BFF" necklaces and sandbox flashbacks have already told viewers why Needy still hangs around with this mean girl -- she doesn't need to make out with her for two minutes on screen to prove it further.

But Jennifer's Body isn't entirely bad, and the satire it actually gets right saves it from failure.

Adam Brody is fantastic as the eye liner-wearing indie frontman, and his lines are the best of the film. His band's presence throughout, coupled with quips about an "emo"-esque character, make great social commentary about current teenage culture.

The film also hilariously comments on America's obsession with disaster (after the fire and a few killings, Needy quips that the rest of the country developed a "tragedy boner" for her town).

Despite these small gems, Jennifer's Body is a grave disappointment. Instead of being a smart and campy good time at the movies, it exposed Cody as a possible one-hit wonder, and it's difficult to see her bouncing back from this one.

Grade: C-