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High school teener Kate (Brittany
Snow) considers herself an "invisible", one who has never been noticed anywhere---in school, at home, in any neighborhood the lifestyle of her promiscuous mother Lori (Jenny
McCarthy) drags her to. A newcomer in school, Kate gets a crush on the school team's basketball captain, John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe), a slam-dunking jock who scores high on
the ball court and even higher with the campus females. But Kate discovers that John is triple-timing the chief cheerleader Heather (Ashanti), the aspiring TV-journalist
Carrie (Arrielle Kebbel) and the vegan activist Beth (Sophia Bush), and discloses the fact to the three girls, each of whom believes she is the only one in the basketball hero's
heart. Wanting to be someone at last, Kate decides to fit in and accepts a revenge scheme hatched by the three---they will make John Tucker feel the same degree of pain he
has caused the girls. When the usual get-even tactics backfire, the three cook up a meaner plot: they will do everything to make Tucker fall in love with Kate who will then
reject him
Light comedy John Tucker Must Die
is a movie aimed at teenage girls who may resonate well with the characters. The school setting is authentic as authentic can be---showing campus life with all its attendant thrills and spills, from locker room talk to hair-pulling sessions among competing campus queens---helping the story flow smoothly and believably. The movie's title forebodes doom but the movie isn't half as brutal as the title implies. The plot is familiar and predictable reminiscent of
Mean Girls and Can't Buy Me Love , so it is understandable if fussier movie buffs scoff at the movie as just another flash in the comedic pan. More than the
less-than-funny jokes, what can be annoying in the movie is the way Metcalfe and McCarthy are projected as hotter properties than their roles call for. Pretty Boy Metcalfe
could pass for a Mel Gibson Circa 1976, and is portrayed in the movie as a heel who all too easily elicits sympathy after his "conversion." McCarthy, an ex-Playmate who has
a wonderfully preserved body unmatched by an aging face, seems to have built into her contract that the expression "My, she's hot!" is to be uttered by someone whenever she exits
a scene.
Honesty and personal integrity, the message of John Tucker Must Die, is positive but it
gets snowed under by the situations advancing the revenge theme. What would have been admirable, common sensible and even charitable decisions (like quitting the get-even
scheme when Kate's conscience gets the better of her) go overboard and turn into moralizing or sermonizing. A lot more action footage devoted to the get-even tactics stands
a greater chance of being retained in the memory than the words-words-words footage that seems inserted to serve as the movie's redeeming factor. Add to that the sexual
innuendoes spiking the movie here and there and you have an unfair situation treated like an unfunny comedy with an unconvincing resolution. A final word of caution: it is
not advisable that young teens view the movie for the sole reason that it takes too much for granted. No one questions premarital sex or promiscuity in the story: the focus
is on who gets to bed with hero, not the morality (or immorality) of doing it outside of marriage. Dangerous for young minds.
(Date Reviewed: 15 September 2006)
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