Published: Friday, July 28, 2006
'John Tucker' dies on the big screen
Jenny McCarthy has a supporting role in the flick.
By ROGER MOORE
Call him an operator, call him a playa. But John Tucker has it all.
Rich, popular, handsome, the star of the school basketball team, he's what Tom Wolfe would call a "Master of the Universe." It all comes to him as if he's entitled to it.
Especially women. Especially when he's clever enough to tell them "I really can't date anybody during basketball season," thus keeping their liaisons secret. Especially when he's careful to date one girl from the cheer squad (Ashanti, all attitude and hair), one "smart girl" (Arielle Kebbel, good) and one vegan over-easy (the adorably vampy Sophia Bush of "One Tree Hill").
But little John (Jesse Metcalfe) is young and arrogant. He should see that this can't last. And when the girls find out they've been played?
"John Tucker Must Die."
Welcome to "When Cliques Collide," this week's installment in the War Between the Sexes, High School Edition. The girls who've been wronged are brought together in their fury, and organized by the new wallflower in school, Kate (Brittany Snow of "Nip/Tuck").
Revenge
And their revenge takes many forms, some of them funny, in this feather-weight high school comedy. Character assassination doesn't work. Sneaking him estrogen pills to get him in touch with his feminine side, conning him into wearing a thong, somehow, John Tucker turns every disaster into another reason he's the most popular guy in school.
The women turn to making over Kate into someone Tucker simply must have, a girl who will lure him to his doom. That's pretty much where John Tucker dies. The other girls have personality, sass, spirit. Snow is too much the Plain Jane. The movie's heart and soul is a bore.
She's doing a poor-girl's version of Hilary Duff here, down to the dicey relationship with her unlucky-at-love mom (Jenny McCarthy here, a blander version of Heather Locklear in Duff's "The Perfect Man").
Kate wants to date Tucker's hunky, soulful brother (Penn Badgley). And he's scared of losing her to his jock-heel brother.
"I don't know man," he says. "She's like, deep."
"Dude, I'm DEEP. I'm dating the Poetry Club!"
Betty Thomas of "The Brady Bunch" movies directed this, and the girl-gathering scenes, beginning with a very funny volleyball cat-fight, work well. She finds the laughs in the various get-John Tucker set-ups. There's just enough edge to the script (Ashanti and Bush bring it on) to make it pop whenever the foursome are together onscreen.
But Snow is as colorful as her name, rarely bringing enough spark to a character cliche (the make-over princess) we've seen in a couple of movies a year every year since "Pretty Woman."
And the movie loses its meanness in its last third, a cop-out that robs it of the reason for making it and giving it such a nasty title.
So no, John Tucker doesn't die. They barely even wing him.
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