Freddie Prinze Jr, Rachel Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard, Anna Paquin
Hey! Do you all remember when Anna Paquin won that oscar? Yeah, neither do I.
Why do movie people insist on casting cute little hotties to play societal outcasts? I don't believe it, you wankers. Rachael Leigh is a frying-pan toting cutie, and I doubt she's ever been on the wrong side of popular in her life. Like Drew Barrymore and Leelee Sobieski in Never Been Kissed, this chick may wear glasses and have bad hair, but she's still a skinny, cute, adorable girl who any guy would have loved to boff at the prom. Try casting an unknown, plain looking girl in the role, for god's sake! And don't even mention Janeane Garofalo. Yes, she's talented. In fact, I love the woman, but she's just as cute, thank you. The MatchMaker and the Truth about Cats and Dogs proved that. I heard someone mention Christina Ricci. As an outcast? It didn't really work in Casper, it ain't gonna work here. Face it. Hollywood can't cast an outcast because there aren't any in Hollywood. If you think you're an outcast, you're a poser outcast, and all other outcasts would kick out poser ass.
So if you're an actual outcast and you're going to this movie to garner some hope about your life, you're pretty much stepping into oblivion. This is why the world has image-obsession problems. A friend of mine is quite adament that beauty begins on the inside, and as hokey as that might sound, he's probably right. Contacts and a haircut do not a popular girl make.
But Hollywood does have this thing with outsider girls getting the insider man. It's been going on forever. This flick, Never been kissed, think back to the eighties and you get Pretty in Pink, think back further and you get Breakfast at Tiffany's...did I mention Pretty Woman?
No?
How odd! Because that's what you're watching. The teen version of Pretty Woman. Which was essentially based on that old flick, My Fair Lady. Which, by the way, was based on the play Pygmalion. So we're essentially being duped into watching a remake of a remake of a remake of a play that very few people remember. Can't those pot-smoking Californians come up with anything NEW?
This, like all other stories of outsider women prevailing by buying a new dress and getting a new haricut is cute. The plot is this: Freddie Prinze gets dumped by his prom queen girlfriend, and he mouths off to his idiot buddies saying that because he is the most popular guy on campus, he can make ANY girl into prom queen. Because we wouldn't want the movie to end in ten minutes, the bet is on. One idiot friend chooses Laney (cook), as the lucky chick. Freddie gets his groove on and turns up the charm higher than heat in a sauna. Will this succeed?
DUH.
In the grand tradition of cute movies, everything works out. Don't whine to me that I'm ruining the movie. If you thought you were renting a tear-jerker, you must not be able to tell 'Comedy' from 'Drama'. Rule of thumb: When it says 'Comedy' everything works out. When the sign says 'Drama', it probably won't. In the rare cases of 'Comedy-Drama', everything works out, but there's a lot of annyoing tension in between.
My Advice: Yep. A cute movie. However, I recommend seeing 10 Things I hate about you first.