SUBMITTED BY Fred Hill
March 21, 2001 — Here is a review by Kevin Maynard with Mr.Showbiz:
Berke (Liberty Heights' Ben Foster) can't get a break. First,
his perfect girlfriend, Allison (the beautiful Melissa Sagemiller,
who has the slightest Gwyneth-y overbite), leaves him for a hunky
Brit who used to be in a boy band (Once and Again's Shane West). Now,
having undertaken a desperate bid to win her back, Berke's stuck in
the school play, a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream
created and directed by a dictator with jazz hands (Martin Short).
His only happiness comes from hanging with budding singer-songwriter
Kelly (Kirsten Dunst), but there's no chance of romance, since he's
best pals with her big bro (Colin Hanks, son of Hollywood's most
famous Hanks). Throw in some raunchy sight gags (a horny terrier, for
instance), supermodel babes Kylie Bax and Carmen Electra, the musical
stylings of Vitamin C and Sisqo, and you can't go wrong, right?
Wrong. Miramax's latest teen effort deserves to be applauded
for not casting Freddie Prinze Jr., but this sloppy, somnolent,
strung-together flick pales when compared to such other teenage riffs
on classic literature as Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You. The
direction by Tommy O'Haver (Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss) is pretty
listless once he's completed a bouncy opener, which features Vitamin
C lip-synching (why isn't it her voice?) "Love Will Keep Us Together"
with the entire neighborhood, while poor Berke plods down the street.
R. Lee Fleming Jr., who previously wrote She's All That, one of the
weaker (yet inexplicably successful) teen pics of recent years, stays
true to shticky form. Considering its pop-art production design, the
film is noticeably badly photographed, even though the cinematography
was done by Maryse Alberti, who previously gave a glam sheen to
Velvet Goldmine.
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