Movie Review: John Tucker Must Die

While I'm getting complimentary movie channels, I get to watch films I wouldn't normally watch. One of them is John Tucker Must Die which is really an awful title for what the film is about, which is essentially a variant on Mean Girls.

Just as background, John Tucker is the star basketball player, and as such, he gets to be with any girl he wants. Played by Desperate Houswives' Jesse Metcalfe, he's every girl's fantasy, saying to each girl whatever they want to hear. Metcalfe is cast, presumably for his good looks, but also because he's not half as slimy as the character he's meant to play.

He simultaneously dates three high school girls (he's in high school too), which is noted by a fourth one who watches the action as a waitress, before she too gets involved. The three, who come different cliques (one's a head cheerleader, one's a braniac, one's a vegan), find out about one another, and plot revenge.

Despite everything they try to do (from saying he has genital herpes, to putting estrogen in his muscle builder pills, to getting him to wear a woman's thong) seems to backfire. He's clever enough to fight back from humiliation.

While the film centers around the women, especially trying to decide whether Kate, the waitress protagonist who's going to be remade by the three jilted girls to be the "perfect girl" that will dump John Tucker, is really going to fall for John Tucker or not, and whether, indeed, John Tucker is going to fall for Kate.

You have to say this film is charming without being particularly good. The girls are somewhat caricatures, coming up with a plot that no real girls would try. The lead guy is almost too oddly clever to be believable.

There's a subplot where her lab partner (is it John Tucker's brother? does it matter) has a thing for her, and you think the two might get together, but there's too much with the main plot to actually treat this seriously. There's also the subplot with the mother who dates one jerk after another, even though it's treated superficially and comically, and its primary point is for Kate to realize she's never seen a healthy relationship, and that perhaps as sensible as she thinks she is, maybe it's not been that healthy.

It's enjoyable in the way Mean Girls is enjoyable, which likable characters, but perhaps nothing much deeper than that (it's a bit more clever than other films of its ilk, but overall, not that great).