I Don’t Love You, Beth Cooper

July 17th, 2009 by cbwilkins | Posted in Picture blog |

But, I don’t hate you either, which is surprising. About two years ago I first saw the novel this movie is based on in a store and picked it up because the title sounded interesting. Well, after reading the synopsis, it didn’t seem like something I’d want to spend my time reading, and the movie didn’t fail to live up to that notion. It’s not the worst movie ever, which it easily could have been judging from the trailers, but, more than anything, it just wasn’t that good.

Essentially it’s just a hackneyed “nerd hangs out with the cool kids and shows that the popular girl isn’t happy with her life and everybody feels better about everyone else and the douche bags get theirs in the end” movie. There have been about a million of them, and most of them have been better. When you take out the over the top nonsense, you’re left with stuff that just isn’t that funny. I think a lot of the movie was meant to be earnest, but it ends up coming off a little schizophrenic.

The really upsetting part is that director Chris Columbus has made really good movies before. Hell, he directed two of the Harry Potter movies. I didn’t see them and think the Harry Potter crap is dumb, both literarily and from a film perspective, but people seem to love them. More importantly, he directed Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone, and Adventures In Babysitting, as well as a few less good, but still better than I Love You Beth Cooper, movies.

While the director seems to be regressing, a few of the actors actually came out looking good, especially Lauren Storm, who steals a ton of scenes as the ditzy, slutty friend. Sure the role is cliche and pretty much anybody could have looked good doing it, but she’s the one who did. I never would have thought that the annoying little girl from Remember The Titans would grow up into a smoking hottie, but Hayden Panettiere did:

She doesn’t really get to show off much here, and I still wonder how long the whisper thing she does in serious scenes will last, but the girl is all about acting; she’s been doing it forever and she’s cute and pretty enough to have a good little run. She’s still only 19, so she’ll be able to ride this high school thing for a little while more, then the college thing, and, hopefully, by the time all that’s over she’ll have fine tuned herself enough to be able to be the next Meg Ryan, only way hotter.

One guy who really shouldn’t be doing the high school thing is the movie’s lead, Paul Rust. The guy is 28. that’s right, 28, a full six months older than I am, and they’ve got him starring as a high school senior. Who the fuck did they think they were kidding? Look at this guy:

(I don’t know what’s up with the picture frame.) At no point in the movie are you fooled and really, if you start thinking about this 28 year old dude hanging around this 19 year old girl, it gets a little creepy. Hopefully he was putting on a nerd voice for this movie, cause if not, he should never play the lead again. He’s be fine as the nerdy friend, but he wasn’t even that sympathetic, just whiney.

Alright, the more I’ve written the worse the movie seems, but I guess I went in expecting the worst piece of crap since Transformers 2 and before G.I. Joe, so I was a little surprised. All in all, not a great movie though.