Thomas 'Tommy' Salomme: [Swinging the buchet on the ferris wheel] If the buckets a rockin' dont come a kn-kn-kn-knockin'... Yeah!
Sam: I like to say that men change, but we never do.
Thomas 'Tommy' Salomme: [sarcastically, making fun of Josie] Mr. Coulson Rocks my world!
"Never Been Kissed" is the sort of film that would thrill the cast of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," the legendary television show which has elevated the process of watching horrible movies into an art form. They'd have a field day with this film's attempted sentimentality, its happy-go-lucky acting style, and the numerous jokes which fall far short of anything so blatant as outright humor. They'd also likely appreciate the story's attempts to bring warm and fuzzy cheeziness to every convention it attempts to embrace. Ah, thank you, movie.
If you've seen the trailer, you basically know every twist of the story. Twenty-five year-old Josie Geller (Drew Barrymore) is a junior editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, though she dreams of pursuing her passion: writing. Her editor doesn't think she's ready to be a reporter, but she finally gets her big break thanks to her youthful appearance. Her mission: go undercover as a high- school student and write a series of articles about the trials and tribulations modern teens have to face on a daily basis. It's a choice assisgnment; if she does well, it could break her career wide-open.
The problem is, Josie is much too conservative and spastic to be accepted into the elite cliques she's supposed to be milking for story material; she is even, horror of horrors, considered "uncool." Because of her plain, unattractive features (yes, Drew Barrymore is playing an ugly duckling-- more on this later), she is relegated to the outskirts of the school's social circle, eventually befriending a fellow nerd named Aldys (Leelee Sobieski from "Deep Impact"). Aldys appears to be a sweet, highly- intelligent girl, whose biggest problem is her unusual name. "Try being named after a guitar-playing pussycat," laments Josie in a joke that apparently flew over the heads of the fourteen year-olds who filled the theater at my advance screening.
Even among the monsoon of wretchedness currently playing at your local cinema, "Never Been Kissed" stands out as a shining beacon of irrelevance, a shimmering tower of "Who Cares?". None of us are strangers to bad movies, but even so, it's fairly rare to get one which is not only clueless, formulaic, and obviously tailored to the lowest common denominator, but completely oblivious to its own lack of merit as well. "Never Been Kissed," bless its little heart, actually seems to think it's telling the audience an entertaining story, rather than one full of stereotypes and the cinematic cliches we've seen so many times before. It's rather like watching "Casablanca," as performed by a group of first-graders. It's crude, shallow, and insulting. I have absolutely no doubt it will make at least a hundred million dollars at the box office.
As anyone who has seen the trailer already knows, Josie eventually blossoms into a creature of grace and beauty. No surprise there, and the sooner the better: the scenes with the "ugly" Josie are among the most unintentionally funny that I've witnessed all year. Barrymore looks like a woman desperately trying to hide the fact that she's a knockout, rather like Rachel Leigh Cook in "She's All That." No amount of crusty hairdos or horrid, overdone zombie-esque makeup can hide the fact that our star is hot stuff, and the way the movie expects us to simply buy into the fiction shows us just how low Hollywood's opinion of the average moviegoer's mentality is. (See also "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," "Hope Floats," and the aforementioned "She's All That.") Nonetheless, we are subjected time and time again to cheap gags involving Josie's confirmed "loser" status while the film meanders slowly towards its utterly predictable conclusion.
One thought ran through my mind like a mantra as I watched this movie: if you're an adult who's so insecure that you require acceptance from a group of high-school students, you've got bigger problems than never having been kissed. The film asks us to cheer for Josie, even as she tries to befriend a group of people who would make Ace Ventura look like a Jedi master. Poor Josie falls in love twice, once with her teacher (Michael Valtan), and once with the school's O.D.M.O.C. (Obligatory Dashing Man on Campus). It's all sweet and gooshy and smarmy, but I wonder how innocent it would've felt if Josie had instead been a twenty-five year-old guy, picking up a seventeen year-old schoolgirl under false pretenses. Would the teenyboppers in the audience still have cheered at the conclusion of the film? Probably not. Double standards are "cool," you know.
By : Joe Barlow
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 4
NEVER BEEN KISSED should be dedicated to all of you who've had nightmares of having to return to high school. Drew Barrymore, in one of the best performances of her career, stars as Josie Geller, a 25-year-old "Chicago Sun Times" copy editor and would-be reporter. Josie is proud of her current job in which she has a private office and all the office supplies she can use, but she desperately desires to be a reporter.
The newsroom nerd, who feels compelled to correct everyone's grammar, especially that of her boss, played by John C. Reilly, Josie is willing to put her job on the line to go undercover in high school. The paper's owner, played with noisy bluster by Garry Marshall, fires people if they don't deliver.
As directed by Raja Gosnell and written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, the story charms us with its intelligent humor. The comedic dialog works along with the physical comedy, and they even manage to make the clichéd sex education class scene funny again.
Josie was one of those girls for whom high school was a living hell. Mocked as "Josie Grossie" and physically taunted in the halls, she barely survived the reign of terror. Now she is heading back into the flames of Hell, all in the quest for a story.
The beauty of Barrymore's performance is in how bad she's willing to let herself look. As a copy editor, she wears some of the dowdiest dresses possible and is made up like a 25-year-old trying to look twice her age for some amateur play. In the frequent flashbacks to her old high school, we see how bad it was for the klutzy but smart Josie and how awful Barrymore is willing to appear. With braces, a pockmarked and pudgy face and tacky clothing, she looks so pathetic that it's easy to empathize with her -- she looks like the girl that no one would ask for a date. Although the story has nary a serious moment, there is plenty of social commentary just below the surface.
As an investigative reporter, Josie's euphoria quickly turns to fear. It is only the school nerds called "The Denominators" and led by Aldys (Leelee Sobieski from DEEP IMPACT), who are willing to adopt her. The beautiful people want nothing to do with her, and her first proposal for a story -- an exposé of bad cafeteria food -- is turned down flat by her paper. Only the arrival of her savvy brother Rob, played in a boyishly charming performance by David Arquette, saves the day. Undercover himself, he joins the in-crowd in a single day by becoming the "Cold Slaw King of the World" in an eating contest with a big jock. Once on the inside, he plants positive rumors about Josie without admitting that she is his sister,
Barrymore shows us parts of her acting ability that we've not seen before. One of the funniest scenes occurs when she does an impromptu dance on stage after eating a drug-laced brownie. Basically, Barrymore just lets it all hang out, while delivering a real crowd-pleasing performance throughout this scene and all the rest of the movie.
So what seals Josie's fate as a certified member of the popular group? Why, choosing just the right theme for the school's prom -- the school aggressively competes each year for the city's best prom, and this year someone stole their original choice of "The Millenium." Some of the costumes worn using Josie's theme are really inspired, none more so than that of her brother. The film's ending is so hokey that it becomes almost a parody, but Barrymore's innocent charisma gives its such grace that it becomes a perfect cap to a precious movie.
