80 - Not Another Teen Movie

Connection To JOE DIRT - Jaime Pressly.

In time to come when all the spoof movie movies get lumped together as the scraping of the bottom of the barrel for parody, it will be a shame for the genuinely funny ones in the bunch, it to be fair is films that would pre-date Date Movie, films such as this teen spoof Not Another Teen Movie.

Not Another Teen Movie parodies unsurprisingly an whole bunch of teen movies particularly the comedies (so I guess it does fall into the trap of spoofing something already funny - but at times at least as a new joke to with it, also it parodies the more earnest scenes of these comedies)

Jake (Chris Evans - doing a better Freddie Prinze Jr. then Prinze Jr.) makes a bet with his friends to turn Janey (Chyler Leigh) into prom queen even though she has glasses, a ponytail and paint covered overalls, so yeah the basis is She's All That with scenes or characters mimicking among other teen movies such as American Pie, Can't Hardly Wait, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, 10 Things I Hate About You and Bring It On among others, yeah it's noticeable that most of the teen movies are from the 3 or 4 years before

The best characters for me are Mia Kirshner as Catherine, taking off Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in Cruel Intentions as Jake's sister (only by blood), she does still get to be sexy for the most part even when doing ridiculous things (the brother/sister incest thing is tiny bit ironic since Chyler Leigh kissed her real brother on film, since they played love interests in Kickboxing Academy), another enjoyable character was Sam Hungington as Ox (taking off Chris Klein's Oz from American Pie) I just love how he plays the performance

My favourite scenes including Ricky reading 10 Things I Love About Janey in class, the musical number (showing Disaster Movie how a musical number featuring the cast should go) and I like Jake trying to save Janey's brother from bullying.

The films worst scene for me, and is the scene that takes toilet humour literally as the three horny freshman characters spying on a girl on toilet who ends up getting discussing, this is not the worst part but the scene ends with the English teacher among others getting covered in shit, the scene goes on way too long for a pay off that is more disgusting and funny.

Overall, because plenty of the jokes hit the mark and everybody plays their characters so well, the film ends up being so damn enjoyable for me.

76 - Can't Hardly Wait

Connection To JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS - where to start the directors/writers Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan as well as the actors Seth Green, Breckin Meyer and Donald Faison, I'll cheat a little bit and go for Elfont and Kaplan rather then any of the actors.

I'll always have a soft spot for teen comedies even though now it's been 12 years since I last could call myself a teen - though I'm probably close to the ages of some of the actors that tend to be cast for teen, maybe even younger in some cases (wasn't Stockard Channing like 60 when she made Grease - I like Stockard Channing I don't know why I am picking on her), every few years or so comes one that I end up really liking such as Clueless, Mean Girls or Easy-A (these are examples and not the complete list)

This is a preface I perhaps I could have put at the beginning of a teen movie I've already covered, but hey ho, and while I don't believe Can't Hardly Wait is a classic of the genre, the film deserves to better known then it is -

The film mostly takes place over 1 night at a party - a very PG-13 party... literally, scenes and characters where cut to to tone it down the characters include crying drunk girl (Jennifer Elise Cox) and Stoned Girl (Amber Benson), who both still can be glimpsed briefly in the final film.

The film is basically about a high school graduation party and it's various misadventures of the characters who attend it, we have Ethan Embry whose liked Jennifer Love Hewitt for years and plans to pour his heart (in a letter) at the party, her very recent ex-boyfriend Peter Facinelli is also at the party and is trying to convince his friends to dump their girlfriends, we have Lauren Ambrose's snarky friend who gets stuck in the bathroom with gangsta wannabe Seth Green (the two used to be friends) and we have geek Charlie Korsmo vowing to get revenge on Facinelli. These are the principal stories but there are lots and lots of characters seen many of them are familiar faces which I'll get to in a bit.

All these characters are enjoyable to see on the screen and particularly in two of the strands go exactly the way you expect but it's not a bad thing at all, among the other actors who pop include Jaime Pressly, Selma Blair, Jason Segel, Freddy Rodriguez, Erik Palladino, Sara Rue, Clea DuVall, Breckin Meyer, Donald Faison, Jenna Elfman, Jerry O'Connell and Melissa Joan Hart, who I like a lot is stuck with one of the weaker minor-subplots of desperately trying to get her yearbook signed, there's also the other minor-subplot of the girls house who is trying to stop is getting wrecked that is also on the weak side.

It occured to me that with Green, Segel and Benson in the cast - that is all her 3 major TV love interests in one film (Kennedy didn't count), besides that Paige Moss appears who in Buffy was the the lead to Green/Hannigan spiting up (Channon Roe, Nicole Bilderback, Clea DuVall and Eric Balfour all have appeared in Buffy too)

Overall very cool teen movie, I actually prefer it to American Pie, which is the year after and ends with a graduation party so there's a link there and would sooner revisit this, I enjoyed many of the characters even those that make fleeting appearances, so I recommend the film.