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Romantic teen comedies are a dime a dozen. Every year there
is a new crop, of which some are very bad, most are OK, and
a few are very good. They are mostly pretty easy viewing and
their success usually relies heavily on the charisma of the
young actors on show. Drive Me Crazy is one of the watchable
ones mainly due to the unstoppable bubbliness of Melissa Joan
Hart.
Hart plays Nicole Maris, your typical all American high school
girl whose main preoccupations are organising the school's centennial
dance and ensuring that she snares the right boy to accompany
her to said dance. When her impossibly cute attempts to win
the affections of hunky basketball team captain fail, she is
faced with the horrific possibility of attending the big event
alone. This, of course, can not be allowed to happen so she
resorts to Plan B which involves her grungy next door neighbour
Chase Hammond (Adrian Grenier). Chase has been recently dumped
by girlfriend Dulcie (Ali Larter, who seems to be in everything
these days) so agrees to pretend to be Nicole's date for the
dance. This is more complicated than it sounds because the whole
set up needs to be believable to all the other kids otherwise
Nicole will look ridiculous. Therefore Nicole and Chase must
pretend to be a loving couple for the weeks leading up to the
dance.
What pans out after this is fairly easy to guess and the final
ending is predictably naff but mostly the film is relatively
harmless and fairly enjoyable. The characters are mostly 2 dimensional
but it is difficult not to like Melissa Joan Hart's bubbliness
and she has pretty good on screen chemistry with Grenier. The
film has a running theme throughout about the things that teenagers
will do to 'fit in'. One scene shows how kids will say mean
things about their friends when they are not there (just to
keep a conversation flowing). Another scene likens the teenage
'follow the leader' attitude to that of Hitler's followers in
Nazi Germany. Yet more scenes describe what the high school
beauty queen has had to do over the years to fit in and feel
accepted (as an aside, far from being stereotypically ditzy,
this girl is probably the most level headed character in the
film).
Overall, pretty standard teenage fare, but with enough charm
to make it watchable.
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