Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Jaime Pressly, Mia Kirshner, Chyler Leigh, Chris Evans, Eric Christian Olsen
Director: Joel Gallen
Do you like teen movies? Well it really doesn’t matter if you do or not because as long as you like comedies you should find something to smile about here. You’ve probably seen movies like AMERICAN PIE or ROADTRIP or perhaps caught Sarah Michelle Gellar in CRUEL INTENTIONS. NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE takes the most obvious elements from all of these, plus many others, sticks them all together in a simple cliched storyline and then parodies them.
All the characters listed in the cast even have their cliched characters description next to their name! There’s ‘The Bitchy Cheerleader’, ‘The Popular Jock’, ‘The Perfect Girl’, ‘The Token Black Guy’, ‘The Foreign Exchange Student’ – get the idea. The list goes on and on.
In case it matters to you the story is basically that Jake (Chris Evans) ‘The Popular Jock’ accepts a bet to ask out the unpopular and serious Janey (Chyler Leigh) ‘The Pretty Ugly Girl’ and make her into the school’s prom queen. Ring Any Bells?
Of course Janey has to get a miraculous make-over to suddenly become incredibly attractive and desirable, and the task falls to Jake’s sister Catherine (Mia Kirschner) ‘The Cruellest Girl’, in a classic little scene in which she simply removes Janey’s glasses and takes her hair out of its ponytail declaring that she’s a miracle worker!
Things continue pretty much along these lines all the way through with fast running gags spoofing the obvious shortcomings of the genre.
Jaime Pressly looks gorgeous as Pricilla ‘The Bitchy Cheerleader’ if just a little too old to still be in High School as does the majority of the rest of the class but all teen movies (and TV) are like that. The perfect looking Lacey Chabert is of course ‘The Perfect Girl’ and there has to be ‘The Foreign Exchange Student’ (Carina Vincent) who is topless whenever she’s on screen.
One of the best parodies has to be the sexy Mia Kirschner from TV’s 24, who does an excellent Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character from CRUEL INTENTIONS. I also particularly liked the line used by an onlooker when the schools’ students broke into a choreographed dance scene which went something like – “You’d never guess everyone at this high school is a professional dancer”.
I’d thoroughly recommend NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE because although you might not be rolling in the aisles all the way through you won’t spend a moment without a smile on your face and the more times you watch this the more jokes you will see in it.
Now we finally have the extended uncut edition on DVD but where is the inevitable sequel!
