Film Week

A review of the films I've seen this past week.

I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER (2009)
As predicted, the movie basically boiled away most of the satirical, observational-of-the-genre moments from the novel and left us with, mostly, an average coming-of-age high school comedy. It's a shame the movie never finds its tone. I see why it got terrible reviews, but I didn't think it was as bad as I'd heard. The dissonance, I think, comes from the way it was advertised as something of a wild teen comedy, but is actually a movie where we see the illusions of high school life fall away in favor of hard truths: for some people, there is nothing after high school to look forward to; or, the girl you obsessed over and never spoke to in high school isn't your perfect dream crush, she's a person, and sometimes she's a person you may have a hard time respecting. It's an admirable idea for a movie, but it spends too much time trying to be clever and quirky that the genre movie-ish bits just sort of hang there and seem extra silly when, at the same time, the movie feels it's too smart to do them in the first place. So, it's problem, I guess, is that it wants to be a deconstruction of a genre that it also wants to be a part of. It's a shame it doesn't work. The actors are pretty good, especially the leads. Paul Rust has been rightly praised for his performance as Denis Cooverman, the nerdy valedictorian who decides to no longer suffer in silence over his love for the head cheerleader, but I do think Hayden Panettiere deserves more credit for playing Beth Cooper as a person instead of a stereotype, which is part of the point. **1/2 stars.

POWDER BLUE (2009)
Another one of those movies I hate where several disparate stories connect as a way of dodging the work of writing one that works. Really bad movie, mainly about a stripper with a son in the hospital, a lost dog, and a father she's never met just out of prison. Ray Liotta is good as the father, and Jessica Biel is better than I expected in the lead, but not a good movie at all. And yes, it is the one where Biel takes her clothes off, but not nearly often enough to recommend it on even that basis. *1/2 stars.