Release Date: October 1, 1999
Starring: Melissa Joan Hart, Adrian Grenier, Ali Larter, Gabriel Carpenter, Mark Webber, Susan May Pratt, Keri Lynn Pratt
Directed by: John Schultz
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Films Corp.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (teen alcohol and drug use, language)
The teenage romantic comedy is inevitably faced with a necessary evil: teens can't be involved. The directors and writers typically last attended high school in the early 1980's, and the stars themselves are often two or three (or more) years out of high school themselves. When they're not -- such as in earlier-this-year's She's All That, which paired twentysomething Freddie Prinze Jr. with teen Rachel Leigh Cook -- it's obvious and awkward. Most pictures of this nature can overcome their problems with skill and maturity from all involved, but Drive Me Crazy, from sophomore director John Schultz, has none of this, making it easily the worst teenage romantic comedy yet.
Sunk by an increasing level of standards as well as a shameless devotion to the unorginial, Drive Me Crazy is quickly out of its league. It can't compare to other teen hits like the guilty-pleasure American Pie, or the hilariously witty 10 Things I Hate About You, or even the vaguely self-aware Can't Hardly Wait. What director Schultz and screenwriter Rob Thomas (whose screenplay is based on Todd Strasser's novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date) don't realize is that the genre has hiked up the standards for entry. Teens know how to spot hokum these days, and they're especially demanding in the way of romantic comedies.
And although the film takes pride in its stereotypes, pitting the Spellingesque socialites against the dissident social outcasts, it never once wants to engage them. Whereas films like Can't Hardly Wait and 10 Things solidly mixed typical and atypical, Drive Me Crazy sticks to its questionable nature of making everyone more or less hip and trendy. Everyone's been to the Gap or American Eagle lately, and there's times where there's an overwhelming sensation that this is just a two-hour fashion show.
Stars of the show are veteran TV actress Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina: The Teenage Witch") and veteran independent film star Adrian Grenier (The Adventures of Sebastian Cole), both making their big-time big screen debuts. Hart is school spirit queen Nicole Maris, whose heart and soul has been put into helping plan her school's centennial anniversary gala. She's even got the perfect date picked out, but when he ends up with someone else, things begin to look desperate for Nicole. So she turns to activist, outcast, and next-door neighbor Chase Hammond (Grenier), who's recently been dumped, with promises of making everyone jealous. Somewhere in the middle they take the all-too-common route of falling in love, and after that things go downhill in predictable fashion.
Along this downhill slide, characters come and go with alarming regularity and unconcern from screenwriter Thomas. Although the center stage love story proceeds in straightforward fashion, supporting characters pop up and down to make trivial contributions to the plot before disappearing for inordinate lengths of time. A subplot involving Nicole's father is neither introduced nor sufficiently resolved, but that matters little since it's just one item in the movie's trunkload of inessential baggage.
But the amount of crap being carted around by Drive Me Crazy shouldn't stop the movie from attracting its own sizeable following. Sporting the latest alternarock soundtrack, topped off with the title's Britney Spears single, it's got all the right ingredients in the completely wrong order. Cute, maybe, but definitely not worth the price of admission.
all contents © 1999 Craig Roush