Brittany Murphy vs. Clea DuVall
Battle of the Tough Yet Tender Chicas

We felt a bit silly even thinking about Clea DuVall and Brittany Murphy at this particular cultural moment. It's not because it isn't timely to think about them; DuVall does star in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, which opens this week, and Murphy will turn up in Edward Burns's latest wankathon Sidewalks of New York next month. But when our last 2 Stars 1 Slot matchup pitted cookie-cutter teen-sex-comedy mainstays Ali Larter and Amy Smart against one another, and when über cookie-cutter teen sex comedy American Pie 2 has been #1 at the box office two weeks in a row, it seemed somehow wrong for us to be comparing the careers of two young actors who never have and -- we would venture to guess -- never would appear in a cookie-cutter teen sex comedy.

At least, that's what we thought. We thought both Murphy and DuVall were way too cool to be in a Pie-calibre romp through the garden of juvenile sexuality. We thought the closest they'd come was Murphy's breakout role in the not-really-sex-themed Clueless, and DuVall's co-starring role in But I'm a Cheerleader, the teen sex comedy with a lesbian twist. But the fact is that we forgot there was a whole world of teen sex comedies (or, more accurately, teen "romantic" "comedies") that we either didn't see, never heard of, or were so far beneath our notice that we weren't conversant with the members of their supporting casts. Try to imagine our disappointment when we learned that, in fact, Clea DuVall appeared in She's All That. And Brittany Murphy will appear in this week's Summer Catch -- possibly forced to make out with Matthew Lillard, and billed so far below ex-Camden Jessica Biel that you can't even see her face in the trailer. And that is sad.

Fortunately, not even proximity to Freddie Prinze Jr. can diminish DuVall's or Murphy's cool. Much like Allison Janney did in the same movie, Murphy skipped through the generally average Drop Dead Gorgeous effortlessly proving with a light comic touch how much better she was than the material she had to work with and demonstrating that she understood it was supposed to be high camp. (Evidently, no one had time to explain that to Denise Richards.) And in the above-named But I'm a Cheerleader, DuVall slouches and smokes and squints her way into Natasha Lyonne's favour; in the scene in which DuVall, Lyonne, and several other inmates of their homosexual deprogramming centre sneak out to visit a local gay bar, DuVall gets all tarted up in a tailored black velvet blouse, some hipster pants, and a fresh coat of hair gel, and very nearly converted this commentator to the love that dare not speak its name.

DuVall and Murphy also proved their cool in Girl, Interrupted in which they joined forces with Angelina Jolie and several other young actors to show up the aging likes of Winona Ryder. The moment when Ryder discovers Murphy's hanged corpse was, as far as we were concerned, the essence of the movie in a microcosm: sure, Noni wasn't the one to die at her own hand, but what's the point of going on living only to be so thoroughly upstaged?

Advantage: Murphy.