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| Can't Hardly Wait |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 98 m |
| Public Rating: 8.13 (97 votes) |
Director: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Romance |
Year: 1998 |
| Writer(s): Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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I don't watch teen movies. I am a teen, but their characters occupy no reality recognizable to me. The best (and only other) one I've seen is Dick, a movie which simultaneously delivers jokes about weed AND Nixon. It's smarter and more sophisticated than any Freddie Prinze Jr. that happens to be cluttering the USA Network when I flip through it, and it subverts quite a few expectations. So why is Can't Hardly Wait so damn entertaining? It subverts nothing - with its Blink 182-infested soundtrack and the odious presence of Jennifer Love Hewitt (kept, thankfully, to a minimum), and believing as it does in the comforting myth of true crushes blossoming into life-long romance. In the process, it resurrects quite a few stereotypes - the X-files loving nerd of the 90s (Charlie Korsmo, who gets to rock out to Guns N Roses), the thoughtless jock (Peter Facinelli, whose one-note performance oddly never grows grating), the acerbic but good-hearted smart outcast (Lauren Ambrose in a seriously miscalculated role; this chick couldn't possibly be an outcast, could she?).
And yet, somehow, it's a fun film which just about everyone can handle. Sure, the film resorts to the grossest types, but dammit, at least these types have good lines. And hey - Elfont and Kaplan, along with undistinguished cinematographer Lloyd Ahern II - have a rudimentary sense of style, and they know how to delineate lines of action along the same plane. Remarkably enough, their deft touch keeps stuff from ever getting too serious (until the ending, that is, which devolves into romantic chick-flick cliche).
Assisting in the big push are the stellar cast, especially Seth Green, whose Austin Powers work I didn't find especially funny but who's wanna-be-nigga act is absolutely hilarious. Apparently, everybody but me knew the man's a comic genius, or at least has the best sense of comic timing from any young dude around. Casting in minor parts is especially strong - Melissa Joan Hart parodies her maniacally clean-spirited Sabrina, Jenna Elfman makes for a nicely boozy angel/stripper, and former "Slider" Jerry O'Connell makes for a nicely drunk/moralistic football player. In the end, it supports cliches and offers nothing new, but it's still an easy-to-take, pretty damn funny movie. The best teen film of 1998, whatever that means.
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