I Love You, Beth Cooper
– One star (out of four)
– Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language, some teen drinking and drug references, and brief violence.
– Who’s going to like it: poppy little teens that have never seen any of the classic teen comedies
Everything that’s wrong with teen comedies
I am a fan of good teen comedies. Ferris Beuller. Can’t Buy Me Love. Sixteen Candles. Better Off Dead. Can’t Hardly Wait. Mean Girls. Nick and Norah. I love ’em. They can do no wrong. You would think that a movie that blended all of them together would be fantastic – but it’s not. It’s called I Love You, Beth Cooper. And it’s right up there with this summer’s other un-funny movies like Year One and Imagine That.
I Love You, Beth Cooper stars little-known actor Paul Rust (soon to be see in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds) as Denis Cooverman, a nerd high school valedictorian who, during his graduation speech, confesses his love to the über-popular cheerleader Beth Cooper (Heroes‘ very own superhero cheerleader Hayden Panettiere), a girl to whom he’s never spoken a word (sounds like Can’t Hardly Wait, right?). Along with singling her out in front of their entire graduating class and their families, he digs into every jock, bully and “mean girl.” After the ceremony, Denis nervously invites Beth and her girlfriends (much like the “plastics” is Mean Girls) to a small party at his home. Not that the movie had anything going for it up until this point, but when the girls unexpectedly show up at Paul’s place, the movie takes a bad left turn into Rip-Off Cliché Land.
The girls show up. The crazy “coked-up” superman boyfriend “triangulates her cell phone signal,” finds her at the insulting nerd’s house, tries to kill him and his gay theatre major best buddy. Beth rescues them both. She’s crazy (because we all know how hard it is being beautiful). They drive around. The boyfriend finds them again. They fight. They escape. They drive around again. They fight. They escape. They drive around some more (sounds like Nick and Norah, right?). You can guess the rest from here.
“Borrowing” so much from other movies, you’d think that I Love You, Beth Cooper would be charming and sweet – but it’s not. It’s the opposite. The jokes aren’t funny, mostly consisting of people falling of roofs, getting punched in the face, hit by cars, et cetera. They characters aren’t likable. Beth is a completely psycho chick. She’s constantly crashing cars – into 
people, other cars, someone’s living room – all in a hit-and-run fashion, of course. There are no consequences to her, probably because she’s beautiful. And as if her craziness wasn’t a bad enough characteristic of Beth, she’s also a “dirty girl,” stripping down in front of Denis for a group shower scene (and isn’t Hayden Panettiere too young to be showing side-boob?), literally asking him if she was the girl that he “used to masturbate to.” What happened? I thought the girls in teen comedies were supposed to be cute, charming and innocent. This one is raunchy. She’s makes out with strangers for six-packs of beer. Her boyfriend is a court-marshaled cocaine addict. The crotch of her panties have the word “hello” printed on it. If Denis really is this naïve nerd, then why would his dream girl be this sleazy trashbag? She might as well be an alcoholic stripper.
Everything about I Love You, Beth Cooper is unbelievable. The story, the actions and the results. It feels like they meshed all of the bad scenes cut from the good teen comedies and made a poor, thin movie out of them. Save yourself some money, rent any one of the previously mentioned flicks and get some worthy entertainment out it.
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox
