Don't let the scrumptous male shirtlessness fool you into seeing this.
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| This Movie Must Die |
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As far as lame teen flicks go, this one isn't an abomination of Lindsay Lohan's Just My Luck proportions, but it is close. The premise is too tame (by Heathers and Mean Girls standards) and the jokes and pratfalls are tedious and unfunny. But the real offense of this flick is its inadvertent but embarrassingly blatant sexism.
Jesse Metcalf may be nearing 30, but he's still playing scrumptiously promiscuous high school jocks. This time he isn't getting laid by Wisteria Lane 's alpha cougar, but by three hot high school girls, and all at the same time, no less. Apparently by picking chicks from different cliques (a bigheaded cheerleader, a brownnosing technophile and a ditsy vegan), the girls remain blissfully ignorant of the affairs, even though John Tucker macks on one before crossing the hall (i.e. camera frame) to mack on another. It takes the arrival of Kate (a bland Brittany Snow), daughter of move-aholic Mom Lori (Jenny McCarthy), to spot the sleaziness, and they all team up to plan some sweet G-rated revenge.
Alas, even when four girls put their thinking caps together to make a guy un-dateable, the guy keeps foiling their schemes. They put his model mug on a PSA for STD-awareness, he stands up at an STD conference and wins sensitivity points from the audience. They trick him into wearing panties on a big Basketball away trip, he turns the look into a sexy new trend for all the jocks. What's worse, Kate even begins to fall for the hunk-o-saurus, apparently proving that all any girl really wants is the attention of the school stud. Betty Thomas's sloppy storytelling and comic incompetence can be forgiven but to portray young women as flighty airheads obsessed with boys over all else is downright offensive.Feedback can be sent to Mike at mikewsage@gmail.com.
