Never Been Kissed Review

by "Mac VerStandig" (critic AT moviereviews DOT org)
April 15th, 1999

Never Been Kissed

Reviewed by Mac VerStandig

[email protected]

Http://www.moviereviews.org

1/2 Star (Out of 4)

Teenagers have a lot of power in Hollywood. Every year countless films will be made targeting that audience in particular, and rely on the entire teenage population to turn out on Friday and Saturday nights, wallets in hand. The formula is very simple, you make a film with a big name young actor or actress with sex appeal. You add a high school environment that features everyone from prom queens to math club nerds, and then a very simple relationship conflict that can be worked out in 90 minutes, the typical teenage attention span. The response is enormous as this part of the population will waste it92s money on almost any = film set in an environment they can relate to, and, most importantly, they don92t care to judge films=92 quality, so any piece of trash will = due. That is just what Never Been Kissed, the latest film from director Raja Gosnell, is; trash.

Josie Geller (Drew Barrymore) is the youngest copy editor in the history of the Chicago Sun Times. She has her own personal assistant, unlimited supplies, and her own office. But she is very much dismayed with her position in life. There is nothing she wants more than to be a reporter and go out into the field, where she can play a more active role in the Chicago media. So when an assignment is quite literally thrown at her out of nowhere, she jumps at it with elation.

Constantly smothering Josie in the work place is her friend Anita (Molly Shannon) and her amicable superior, Gus (John C. Reilly). The two of them are both stricken with horror upon hearing the news of her first assignment, as they both deem her to be an office worker and not a reporter. However, since this film is aimed at a teenage audience with little patience for character conflict, this otherwise interesting scenario is resolved within two minutes, and Josie is headed for the field.

Obviously, the field assignment involves a high school. Specifically, she is to become an undercover reporter at a high school, by enrolling in the senior class and "becoming one of them." I don92t think that I = need to even begin to explain all the impossibilities of this situation ever occurring, so I won92t.

The movie develops into Josie trying to find the life that she never led in high school. Interwoven flashback scenes show us just how much of a dork she truly was, and she appears to be heading down that road again. Fortunately for this lame production, other characters do appear that make some of these high school scenes both humorous and remotely interesting. They include the predictable love stories, between both a student (Jeremy Jordan) and a teacher (Michael Vartan), to show that Josie is really two people in one body. Also, her younger brother and opposite, Rob (David Arquette) comes into her new found life and even causes a rare scene that is mildly provocative.

The humor found in this film is actually quite amusing. Typical for teenage films, it is chalk full of sexual innuendoes and condom humor. One scene in particular features a certain classroom activity involving bananas and latex that is absolutely hysterical. Most of the other jokes are straight forward high school humor that anyone who has ever been to high school can appreciate and will enjoy. But those still don92t = recover for the total lack of quality in this movie.

Following this trend of high school movie rules, comes the general acting. It is even worse than the trend of overplaying a scenario from film to film. In this case, Drew Barrymore is absolutely painful to watch. She is required to play her character on two levels, having some very black and white transitions. And although some scenes are written to be particular shades of gray, she seems to hold that color throughout all of her screen time. At one point she is alone with an obvious love interest on a Ferris wheel, and is expected to him on an adult level, since he is one, her teacher. But she never seems to get out of the gray area, and in doing so she makes a mockery out of his otherwise good performance.

Following Barrymore is the pitiful Molly Shannon (Saturday Night Live). She seems to be limited to playing an ecstatic character that no one can relate to, and draws the attention of an audience as simply unrealistic. It is these "qualities" that prevent the aforementioned condom scene from being one of the few decent.

Luckily there is one great performance to emerge out of this otherwise bleak film. David Arquette (Scream) takes home the prize for being able to stand out in an ensemble performance that is absolutely pathetic, and not have his brilliant acting ruined. And as a central character he gets to take on his own mini-plot, which is one of the few well done parts of Never Been Kissed. In a dazzling cherry-on-the-sundae type piece of work, he does an absolutely hilarious Tom Cruise impression from the 1983 hit, Risky Business.

Never Been Kissed is a mediocre film at best. The predictable plot has become so overplayed in Hollywood, that it is sickening to watch time and again, and this film is no exception. The acting is just as bad, but there is the one positive presence of David Arquette to add some light. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that the movie will be a success, because teenagers will pay to see any trash.

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