John Tucker Must Die
by Admin on Dec.07, 2009, under Latest Celebrity Gossip
Description
Hollywood’s hottest young hunk, Jesse Metcalfe (TV’s Desperate Housewives), delivers big laughs on campus in this “hot, hilarious film!’” (NBC-TV, Miami) When three gorgeous gals discover they’ve all been duped by smooth-talking stud John Tucker (Metcalfe), they hatch a devious revenge scheme to turn the tables on him. Now Tucker is going to have to change his ways…or the school jock will soon become the class joke! Can the tantalizing teen trio turn this “serial dater”… More >>
December 7th, 2009 on 12:28 pm
Never mind’s that it’s pretty stupid – “John Tucker Must Die,” like a lot of movies about high-schoolers, actually hates high school and just about everybody in it, and by extension, American kids; it’s the kind of movie that, if parents caught an hour of it, would make them think less of their children for watching it, and to a fearsome extent, pretending to live it out. Early in the movie one character, a cheerleader, remarks about stealing her mother’s estrogen pills: “Well, guys use steroids to build their pecs.” That estrogen will do the same for the cheerleader’s breasts is laughable, but considering the hot debate of steroid use among kids – considering kids have died or flown into abusive rages while using them – that could be most casual, sickening line of the year.
But it is what to expect from Hollywood screenwriters in their 30s who write exploitative trash for money then have the artistic gall to call it mild, girlie comedy – not unlike those fabulous “Laguna Beach” hacks who use insidious, and I mean insidious, editing techniques to create faux docudrama among teens with facial expressions and confused responses clearly mismatched, again and again in the sloppiest manner, to the previous line of dialogue. “JTMD” asks us to believe that the title character (Jesse Metcalf) simultaneously dates three women (Ashanti, Sophia Bush, Arielle Kebbel) without them knowing it, is able to afford repeated dinners at the nicest restaurant in town, owns a great car, stays in four-star hotels for high-school basketball road games, and my personal favorite, owns and drives a yacht. He and his brother have no parents to speak of.
Neither do the three girls, unless you count the cheerleader’s mom reference. One of them (Bush) is an avowed 17-year-old vegan vixen, however. And when they discover they’ve all been dating the same guy in gym class, they get in a brawl and are not suspended, but sent to a 23-minute detention without a teacher.
Is this a satire, as “JTMD” bills itself? An edgy comedy? A smarter, cleverer film knows that teachers hand out discipline, in this post-Columbine world, for looking at each other funny, and that a brawl would constitute the lead story in the six o’clock news. A cleverer film has the girls chase not a superstar athlete, but, say head of the drama club. A cleverer film recognizes teen humor is mined not out of blase, ultra-hardened brat girls, but sweet, emotional, sunny girls. A cleverer film would know a dark comedy, if that’s what “JTMD” intends to be, can’t have cheesy lines and yachts sitting around to be driven.
Instead we have a fourth, “smart” girl (Brittany Snow) is introduced as the girls’ grand, “Taming of the Shrew” plan to woo John and eventually stomp his heart. This angel, of course, begins to fall for John, who is not particularly charming or interesting or anything beyond possessive and very wealthy, which are, if we follow our MTV, two of the trinity (the last being sheer, drop-dead cuteness emanating from those soulful eyes said guys must have, preferably brown) that makes up male desirability. Director Betty Thomas pretends that humor are four very different idiots insulting each other over the cliques they belong to. Ashanti gets the shortest end of the stick, adhering fiercely to the idea that cheerleading, in an empowered, open society that has a foreign Hindu woman as CEO of Pepsi, represents the canopy of female of achievement. Go figure – you break the glass ceiling with a cheer pyramid!
We’ve been pounding this Earth for years now. Why do teens and young women still trail along, lapping it up? There is no real wit in the movie that you can’t see from some third-rate comic being fed lines on a VH1 program, no style, no genuine attitude. It’s all buried behind this driving notion of painting a portrait of a catty, young, rotten, unidealistic America most interested in getting tail, getting even and throwing s-uh-weet hoopty-rah parties. It is not immoral so much as it blank, a double zero signififying an unceasing period of meaningless motions to mimic, most involving self-debasement of young bodies. What fools Hollywood sees our children to be, wants them to be. What numb, donkey fools. If you need more proof, Jenny McCarthy has been cast as the voice of reason – and she’s borderline believable.
Ya know, so much ugliness is spewed about “Islamofascists,” these manaical, stoneaged fiends who apparently can’t tell you the sky is blue, spending most of their time taping martyr videos, finding Mecca and concocting devices to destroy our way of life. Consider, though, that one of the more recognizable items in Muslim countries is the satellite dish . A year from now, this thing’s on a movie channel, and well, whatever evidence terroritsts thought they needed to chart the American decline into shame, they’ve got it. Not because it’s absent morals, but humanity – the better for the terrorists to treat us as the faceless collateral damage they believe us to be.
Rating: 1 / 5
December 7th, 2009 on 3:28 pm
Like many people that I know I did not see this in the theart because I knew it would come out to DVD soon and I was right.It is coming November 14 and I can’t waite.Hope this helps you out!
Rating: 4 / 5
December 7th, 2009 on 5:24 pm
same lame teen movie we’ve seen a million times. guy lies to girl so everyone can be happy, girl descovers lie, hilarity (suuuuuure) ensues. in the end, whatever.
Rating: 1 / 5
December 7th, 2009 on 8:01 pm
What was I thinking when i put this movie on my rental list, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. I guess from watching the previews, I expected something a touch different. But what I go was the typical ‘teen’ movie. You guys know what i’m talking about: they make someone over to get even, they get jealous, someone falls in ‘love’, now they want revenge. The only thing diffent was the reason for the revenge.
There was more to high school than the cheerleaders, the ball players and all their drama. I don’t want the cheerleaders and ball players to be offended because I had some great friends that either was a cheerleader or a ball player. (LOL Ok maybe just the ball players). But for the MOVIE MAKERS: be creative, come with something new. Maybe it’s me growing up, but these teen movies are getting ‘tired’ with their same ol’ routines.
Rating: 1 / 5
December 7th, 2009 on 10:30 pm
John Tucker Must Die has its funny moments, no question. It is a stereotypic view of high school social life from the perspectives of four girls: the head cheerleader, the Harvard-bound, media-savvy campus TV reporter, the vegan, and Kate, the “invisible girl.”
Jesse Metcalfe as John Tucker and Brittany Snow as Kate were excellent in this movie. Although the world seemed to revolve around John Tucker (condemned to “die” for dating the cheerleader, the reporter, and the vegan simultaneously), he just explained his luck with getting dates as “I am extremely lucky.” It is clear that John Tucker is not lucky… he works very hard at all his goals. The three girls, on the other hand, are obsessed with being identified as his girlfriend. The fourth, Kate, is used as bait to bring John down.
As in many teen films, this one minimizes academics and maximizes sexual tension (PG-13 rating).
I saw this movie with a group of teenage boys. The thong underwear scenes were hard for them to take (they were being worn by the basketball players, and if you stay for the first part of the credits, some of the teachers).
As John Tucker will now say, “Honesty is my policy.”
Rating: 3 / 5