F
On the plus side, “I Love You, Beth Cooper” is old-fashioned. It’s nowhere near as vulgar as most contemporary teen comedies. The picture largely eschews nasty language, doesn’t get graphic when it comes to sexual matters, and generally speaking doesn’t show much that wouldn’t have been at home in one of John Hughes’s high school movies of the 1980s. There’s not even much potty humor, unless you count cow patties.
On the other hand, it’s a crushing bore. Adapted from a novel by Larry Doyle, the plot couldn’t be more simple and obvious from a purely narrative standpoint. Ubernerdy valedictorian Dennis Cooverman (the convincingly geeky Paul Rust) uses his address to express his long-suppressed infatuation with classmate Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere), infuriating her brutish soldier boyfriend Rick (Shawn Roberts) in the process. When she shows up at his house with a couple of friends (Lauren London and Lauren Storm) for a party that evening, Rick and his two goons follow, and Dennis and the girls, along with his best buddy Rich Munsch (Jack T. Carpenter)—who everybody thinks is gay, despite his protestations to the contrary—flee and have a night of adventures during which, of course, they learn much about each other and themselves.
The mixture of slapstick and schmaltzy self-revelation on display has a long pedigree in this genre—one need only think back to “Sixteen Candles,” the granddaddy of them all. And helmer Chris Columbus made his directorial debut in 1987 with a pretty good example of it, “Adventures in Babysitting.” But apparently he’s lost his touch with material like this over the years. For all the running around, “Beth Cooper” is incredibly flat-footed; especially in the first hour or so, the pacing seems funereal, with long stretches of inactivity that practically demand canned laughter to fill in the dead spaces but don’t get it. Columbus also badly miscalculates the violence, which is meant to be over-the-top funny but comes across as ugly and cruel (Rick is presumably supposed to be like Chet, the abusive older brother played by Bill Paxton in “Weird Science,” but seems like a grinning sociopath instead). And the occasional use of flashbacks to show the characters in their younger days proves a painful embarrassment, what with all the scruffy hair and acne makeup but no laughs.
To add to the dreariness, Rust (who looks a bit like a young Matt Craven) is a tepid hero, and Carpenter (a near ringer for John Francis Daley, who plays Dr. Sweets on “Bones”) works way too hard—and unsuccessfully—to make Rich a lovable second banana. And if Panettiere wants to escape “Heroes” typecasting, she should probably avoid playing more cheerleaders.
But the saddest bit of casting in “Beth Cooper” is that Alan Ruck plays Dennis’ dad. He was, of course, the sad-sack best friend in one of the classic teen comedies, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Seeing him here only reminds us of how far from that level Columbus’ wan, slipshod movie is. It’s even technically mediocre; one of the greatest oddities comes in the early scenes set at the Cooverman home, where the outside shots show absolutely no other human beings apart from the principals. The effect is ghostly, like a neighborhood out of The Twilight Zone. But throughout Howard Cummings’ production design is pallid, and Phil Abraham’s cinematography nondescript.
At least Nia Vardalos’ terrible “I Hate Valentine’s Day” had the right verb in its title.