Niagara Niagara is a hybrid of two already cliché'd subgenres: the lovers-on-the-run thriller (from Bonnie and Clyde to Natural Born Killers) and the young-obsessive-compulsives-in-love romance (Benny & Joon, Angel Baby). Henry Thomas, in the stringy-haired sensitive-misfit role Johnny Depp is now too old for, falls for Robin Tunney, a woman whose repertoire of tics and emotional outbursts (Tourette's syndrome makes her blurt obscenities, and she occasionally lashes out in violence) is exacerbated by her diet of pills and whiskey. The couple meet-cute while boosting tchotchkes at a hardware store; later, when they've graduated to armed robbery, she orders him to quit shoplifting because "it's not classy."

Neither is the film, though director Bob Gosse and screenwriter Matthew Weiss think they're being subtle by leaving possibly exculpatory details about the pair's childhoods implied but not spelled out. Still, they manage to romanticize both violent crime and mental illness. Tunney earned an award at 1997's Venice Film Festival for her performance, but by the time she has her climactic fit in the toy aisle at a department store, you'll feel relieved that you no longer have to spend time with her. At the Harvard Square.