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John Tucker Must Die

Movie John Tucker Must Die Director Betty Thomas Producer Bob Cooper Cast Jesse Metcalfe, Sophia Bush, Ashanti, Brittany Snow

Reuters

Despite a bold and promising title, "John Tucker Must Die" lacks the courage of its convictions. The teenage girls at the center of a revenge plot against a high school lothario are too unimaginative or maybe just too nice for the job. Writer Jeff Lowell and director Betty Thomas should have screened "Mean Girls" or "Heathers" if they wanted to see how these things can be done with real bite. Because instead of mean girls, they give us mild girls. Young females are the clear target audience. With an attractive though underutilized cast, "John Tucker" should open with average or above-average numbers as counterprogramming to "Miami Vice" and "The Ant Bully." The film begins with two seemingly unrelated situations. In one, Kate (Brittany Snow) suffers from "invisibility." Her single mom (Jenny McCarthy) moves to a new town every time a man dumps her -- which apparently is often -- so that Kate is the perennial anonymous newcomer at every school. She comes and goes without a ripple. The other situation revolves around the amorous exploits of one John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe, Eva Longoria's boy toy on "Desperate Housewives"). Rich, handsome and smooth-talking, the basketball star has his pick of the hottest girls in school. And he usually picks them in threes. Because he is careful to select his girlfriends from different school cliques, no one is any the wiser to his serial dating. Then his current trio -- head cheerleader Heather (recording star Ashanti), school reporter Carrie (Arielle Kebbel) and vegan fast girl Beth (Sophia Bush) -- all wind up in detention with our Kate. A subsequent exchange of information among these three results in the declaration that is the movie's title. But they only want John Tucker to die of humiliation. This is where Kate comes in. Having watched her mom date one John Tucker after another, she knows his type backward and forward. The trouble is, all her schemes to bring John down backfire. Now desperate, the trio persuades Kate to let them turn her into John Tucker's dream girl. They certainly know enough about his tastes and moves to do so. Their plan is for Kate to get John to fall for her, then kick him off her love boat with a concrete life jacket. Here the movie turns into standard-issue teen romance, albeit one in which the girl has a tiny camera clipped to a bra strap so her advisers can monitor and record every stage of the romance. And here, too, the blandness of the characters is telling. John is so obvious and almost innocent in his serial dating that you wonder why anyone cares. You get what you buy into. And Kate is essentially too nice, never really that determined to crush this guy despite all her mother's disappointments in love. You never believe her capable of going through with the scheme. The film's timidity is best expressed in a shot of two girls kissing in a car that is being exploited in the trailer. In the context of the movie, the scene is a hit-and-run, over so fast you may miss it. If you're going to go there, then go there. Meanwhile, the filmmakers seem far too removed from the world of high school and social cliques to draw a convincing portrait of either. The twentysomething actors, besides not looking right, don't really have roles based in any reality. About as close as anyone comes is Penn Badgley, who plays John's younger brother Scott, who takes a fumbling, hesitant liking to Kate. Production values on this Canadian-based production are serviceable.