'I Love you, Beth Cooper' - Good clean fun for the drunk, promiscuous teenager in all of us
There is a scene in I Love You, Beth Cooper that you probably know well from the previews by now. Hayden Panettiere, who achieved fame in the god-awful tv series "Heroes," invites a couple of geeks into the shower with her by facing them and dropping her towel. Provocative, yes, but is everyone remembering that these are a bunch of high school kids? High school kids gleefully enjoying a 5-person orgy in the school shower? Here’s what I can tell you for sure. The conversation that will take place at Hayden’s grandparents house at Thanksgiving dinner in a few months is going to be far more interesting than anything in this movie.I remember hanging out in front of the supermarket when I was in high school trying to find someone over 21 who was willing to buy beer for me and my friends. We would sit outside the Albertson’s on Campus Avenue and try to find some UC Irvine students to buy beer for us, promising ourselves and each other all the while that when we were over 21 we would be cool and buy beer for anyone who asked. Now that I’m 30 and realize how moronic it would be to risk getting thrown in prison just to get some kids drunk, I find it more and more difficult to be entertained by drunken teenagers.
[caption id="attachment_46833" align="alignleft" width="278" caption="Don't these just look like the most fascinating, well-developed characters?"]
[/caption]So I guess I should admit that part of the reason the movie bored me to tears is because I have long since lost the ability to be entertained by asinine teenage banality. The other reason is that the characters in the movie have the combined IQ of a raisin.
On the other hand, writer Larry Doyle seems to realize this, so to spice things up a bit, he has the kids get beer by having Hayden make out with the greaseball behind the counter at the liquor store. If you’re going to have teenage drinking featured so prominently in your movie, you may as well make it interesting by tossing in a little entry-level prostitution. Sadly, this is only the beginning of the prodigious avalanche of stupidity that Doyle means to offer us.
[caption id="attachment_46834" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Wardrobe brought to you by Mean Girls."]
[/caption]So here’s the plot in 100 words – Denis, the geek valedictorian, uses the microphone not to give an inspiring speech, but to declare his love for Beth Cooper, the most popular girl in school, and then to dish out insults to various other people, and announce that his best friend is gay. Beth is mortified but shows up at his house because the speech is cute, and the stage is set for a mind-numbing volley of Jason-Biggs-style dumbassedness. Beth is untouchably popular and cool, Denis is hopelessly incompetent around women girls, and I am unspeakably bored. Calling the movie a tired rehash would be very, very generous.
I should admit that if I had seen this movie when I was an immature and irresponsible 16-year-old, I probably would have absolutely loved seeing a bunch of fellow high school kids drinking vodka out of a World’s Greatest Dad trophy and waving a shotgun around. I’m sure I would have sat there in hysterics at the barrage of primitive sex jokes and ancient high school clichés. I might even have been absolutely transfixed by watching a couple of teenage girls use a popsicle to demonstrate a blowjob for a stunned virgin, who simply can’t believe his luck.Sadly, my years of having any interest in teenage girls are far, far behind me, and my bad-taste radar has reached a highly advanced stage of development. Not so for Larry Doyle and especially director Chris Columbus, who has an impressive filmography and has now delivered his first major cause to hang his head in shame. Home Alone 2 was better than this mess, and we all remember that little fiasco...
[caption id="attachment_46836" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Oops, sorry for yet another party movie cliche ladies and gentlemen, Larry and Chris made me do it..."]
[/caption]Basically, if you’ve ever seen a movie about the awkwardness that we all suffer through in high school, this movie is going to be intolerably boring from beginning to end, so keep that in mind. For the younger viewers, of course, the 15- and 16-year-olds that the movie is targeting, you may very well have a good time. In fact, I suggest you teenagers out there go see this movie with all possible speed, because trust me, this crap gets real old real quick.
The Bean Meter
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