Film Reviews

John Tucker Must Die

• Rating:
• Director: Betty Thomas
• Starring: Ashanti
• Details: US / 89mins (12A).

"We're doing this for every guy who ever lied to a girl". Super hot captain of the basketball team John Tucker (Metcalfe) has a way with girls; keeping them on the long finger, he's got girlfriends all over school but since they are in different cliques, his ruse is never rumbled, as they never meet each other. That is until new girl Kate (Snow) arrives. When wannabe reporter Carrie (Arielle Kebbell), head cheerleader Heather (Ashanti) and veggie Beth (Bush) finally cop on that John is making a cuckold of them, they ask the shy Kate to woo him and then dump him in front of the whole school on his birthday, making him a social pariah in the process. Taking dating tips from the girls, Kate turns into an uber bitch much to the dismay of John's hip younger brother Scott (Penn Badgley).Almost entirely devoid of humour, John Tucker Must Die never tries to be different from every other high school movie you've seen since Class. Most of the jokes are a re-thread of what went before and they even went as far as cutting and pasting in two old Friends jokes: when Joey is mistaken for having herpes on his poster and when Joey wears a thong. They weren't that funny in the first place, either. When the end arrives (thankfully just under the 90 minute mark) everyone has learned a lesson - but what that lesson is, is still under debate. One contention could be that all women do is sit around scheming about guys but then you can't say that, can you? The girls are poorly drawn stereotypes: she's a veggie, so she's different from the cheerleader. Granted, but apart from hair length and colour, everyone morphs into the same character without having any idiosyncrasies to distinguish them from the next. There are plenty of topless shots of Jesse Metcalfe to keep those who might be interested in that kind of thing, interested.

Review by Gavin Burke