One of the brightest concepts for a teen comedy in recent years – several girls decide to get revenge on the local stud who has wronged them – and it is packed with great ideas: the girls all belong to different social groups, the ugly duckling lead is motivated to become involved because her mother (Jenny McCarthy, another good idea) has a history of being taken advantage of by similar men, the stud’s slacker brother becomes an alternative love interest. And the first ten minutes are brilliant – fast paced, full of funny dialogue, bright situations, and you think this is going to be great.
But something goes wrong.
It’s partly the casting: the lead girl is great, and Jesse Metcalfe is fine as John Tucker, but the other three girls are wrong – Sophia Bush has at least a twinkle in the eye but isn’t quite right, the other two are just dead eyes (especially the one who plays the Reese Witherspoon type). They help weigh down the film.
Another problem is they don’t think of anything interesting to get back at Tucker – and the whole “get back at him but it only makes him more popular” was used in the superior Mean Girls (this even reuses the thing about switching his underwear). Maybe all the three girls should have been unpopular or unsocial in some ways themselves – so they could “grow” somehow.
The film throws away two great subplots: the role of Tucker’s brother (gets wasted in a series of repetitive moments – why not have him motivated by revenge, too?) and the mother character (what resolution?).
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