BEFORE: Perhaps I've made a critical error in my planning, because this holiday weekend, when most people are out enjoying their last free time of the summer, I'm at home, re-living the horrors of high school. Oh well, at least I don't actually have to go. Linking from "Mean Girls", Lindsay Lohan was also in "Bobby" with David Krumholtz (last seen in "I Love You, Man").
THE PLOT: A new kid must find a guy to date the meanest girl in school, the older sister of the girl he has a crush on, who cannot date until her older sister does.
AFTER: Well, in terms of organization this has worked out rather well. For the last three films, the big "high-school party" scene has been an important part of the plot - and for three of the last four films, a girl puking has been a plot point. Let's just assume there was a lot of puking at the party in "Can't Hardly Wait" and say it's a common theme, OK?
I've known of this film for a while, and in fact I've been listening to some cuts from the soundtrack for even longer, because they're cool cover songs: "Cruel to Be Kind" and "I Want You to Want Me" performed by Letters to Cleo (and "Mean Girls" had "Dancing With Myself" covered by The Donnas, and "Pitch Perfect" was nothing but covers, so I've got another theme going...)
And in a way, the whole plot here is like a cover song, since it's cribbed from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", which also turned into "Kiss Me, Kate" at one point. I never read that play, but I think I saw a "Moonlighting" episode that also riffed off of it. The title of this film's even supposed to sound a little like the Shakespeare title (but does it, really?) and it's more than a little blatant in its Bard of Avon references, giving characters last names like Stratford and Verona, and setting the whole thing in Padua High.
Let's face it, there are no new stories, just new settings, and one day people will be telling Shakespeare stories that take place on other planets, if they aren't already. I saw a version of Macbeth that was set in a Pennsylvania burger restaurant ("Scotland, PA"), and of course "Strange Brew" ripped off "Hamlet" for its plot, and you can set "Romeo & Juliet" just about anywhere - I'm probably missing a bunch more.
I've got more of an issue with taking actors in their late 20's and forcing them to act like high-school students - probably every young actor's had to suffer through this, because filmmakers don't know what else to do with them. OK, Julia Stiles was 18 when this was released, and Heath Ledger was 20, but he looks much older. The bigger question, does the plot work?
Yes, unless you count the fact that Kate, Shakespeare's Kate, was supposed to be overly mad at the world, or unnecessarily unapproachable somehow, and if you make her a high-school student who thinks that everyone around her is a moron - she's probably right. The concept that her father will only let her younger sister date if SHE will date - well, why would the father agree to that? Why wouldn't he just say "You're too young to date" to the younger sister? It's a strange father that agrees to loopholes, because he should realize that a loophole can be exploited.
In fact, there are a lot of strange occurences here - so to win someone's love, it's OK to lie? It's OK to pay someone to date her sister? For that matter, it's OK to crash your father's car into another car, it's OK to flash your teacher, it's OK for the principal to write porn instead of running the school, to crash someone's house unexpectedly with a wild party, play paintball without guns, and break into someone else's locker. All in the name of love, apparently...
I should take this opportunity to study the original Shakespeare plot, but who has that kind of time?
Also starring Heath Ledger (last seen in "Brokeback Mountain"), Julia Stiles (last seen in "The Devil's Own"), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (last seen in "Looper"), Allison Janney (last seen in "The Hours"), Larry Miller (last heard in "Bee Movie"), Darryl Mitchell (last seen in "Inside Man"), Gabrielle Union, Andrew Keegan, Larisa Oleynik, with a cameo from David Leisure.
RATING: 5 out of 10 soccer balls
No comments:
Post a Comment