Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

"Can't Hardly Wait" from 1998 plays like an instructional video on how to make a formula teen movie. It's all there: the tired characters, the sophomoric dialogue, the predictable ending, the lack of any real originality in the direction, etc. Considering "CHW" was made in 1998, you'd think it would have learned its lesson from teen movies of years past, wouldn't you? If you did, unfortunately, you'd be wrong.

See if this sounds familiar: our hero is Preston (Ethan Embry). For all four years of high school he's had a crush on Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt). Preston never asks her out because she's dating the school's stereotypical jock, Mike (Peter Facinelli). However, on graduation day, Mike dumps Amanda, giving Preston a little confidence in telling Amanda how he feels. He wishes to do this through a love letter that he's been revising ever since Amanda came to school. He's going to give her the letter at a big graduation party at some nameless character's house. After some time, however, he decides not to go through with it and puts the letter in the trash can. Alas, through a series of horribly contrived coincidences, the letter ends up right in front of Amanda. She reads it. She's moved by it. She goes looking for Preston, but she doesn't know what he looks like (this shows off her ignorance, considering that she sat right next to him in their english class for the entirety of their freshman year).

The end of this movie can be easily predicted by reading about three sentences of the summary above, or by reading just about any summary you can find online. Hell, if you saw the trailer for this thing you could've figured it out within seconds. If the movie had just used this as a basis premise and thrown in some clever dialogue and interesting characters, it might have worked better. It would probably still be a lousy movie, but it might not have been completely worthless. Unfortunately, though, writers Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan do exactly the opposite. They give us characters that are either (a) horribly tired and boring, or (b) endlessly annoying, and dialogue that is overconfident in its brainlessness. At one point a character says, "There is fate, but it only takes you so far, because once you're there its up to you to make it happen." Bravo. Look, "Can't Hardly Wait" is not about fate, no matter how much it wants to believe it is. "Can't Hardly Wait" is about a high school freshman who falls in love with the new girl pretty much because he thinks she's cute. Does that mean they were meant to be? I doubt it.

I know I'm not alone in hating this film (a lot of critics had similar complaints to mine), but a number of people love it to death. It currently has a 6.2 out of 10 user rating on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), with many user comments from people who think it's hilarious. One user actually said the following: "This is just a teen party movie!!! It's not supposed to be some profound drama where you 'think' about a lot!!! It's just comedy!!!" (I didn't add those exclamation points). This person does not understand two things: 1.) Films are films, and even if they are lighthearted comedies, they should always have some thought put into them. 2.) It is never "just comedy." Comedy should be taken as seriously as drama because comedy is actually supposed to be FUNNY! You can't just run around acting like a jackass and saying stupid, inane things and expect it to be funny. The same IMDb user said "I think Jennifer Love Hewitt is a very sweet gal in real life, you can just see it on her face, she is a doll, so stop ragging on her, please!!!" I won't go into the complete irrelevance of this quote to the film, but I will say that I think the "stop ragging on her" part is aimed at me, considering I'm the only person I can find for about six months back that posted a comment trashing her performance. What I wrote, verbatim, is the following: "It doesn't help that the girl he(Preston)'s a had a crush on for four years is played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, who isn't much of an actress in the first place, and whose character isn't any help." I stand by my statement. Her performance in this film is dead in the water (I'll post as past evidence to the "not much of an actress" statement the two "I know what you did last summer" films). Come to think of it, the only person who gives a decent performance in this mess is Lauren Ambrose as Preston's loner friend Denise. Ambrose is sweet, likable, and convincing. This could've been an interesting character, but again the screenplay does nothing with her except to get her involved with a pathetic Seth Green character, which certainly does not help.

I watched "CHW" two or three times, trying to find some redeeming quality to it. I knew it had to be there. I knew a film couldn't possibly be this empty, this void of any real emotion (this was before I saw "Top Gun"). The film is billed as a romantic comedy. I found neither romance nor comedy. This film is a bland, boring void. I can't think of a single reason why anyone would want to make it.

Back to the attempted comedy. The filmmakers think the following things are funny: a German exchange student (Alexander Martin) being told to say "Would you like to touch my penis?" and "I am a sex machine."; a stripper who mistakes Preston's curiosity about Barry Manilow's song "Mandy" ("It's not about a dog.") as an obsession with Barry Manilow; and the ever annoying white-guy-pretending-to-be-ghetto character, played by Seth Green, who is usually likable, but here just pissed me off.

I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh because those things aren't funny. In 100 minutes of this movie, I heard one, count 'em, one line of well-written, if not, decent dialogue. Near the beginning, an annoying cheerleader-type girl (Melissa Joan Hart) is trying to get every senior's signature in her yearbook, right next to their pictures. When Denise arrives, the girl inquires as to why she didn't get her senior portrait taken. She answers, "To avoid moments like this one, actually."

It was all downhill from there.

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