I’m not sure why I decided to watch a teen movie, but I saw John Tucker Must Die today. This film stars Jesse Metcalfe (whom I know as John the landscaper from the TV show Desperate Housewives), Brittany Snow, Ashanti, Arielle Kebbel, and Sophia Bush as a group of high school kids dealing with typical high school dating problems.
John Tucker (Metcalfe) is the guy who has it all in high school. He’s good-looking, is the captain of the basketball team, and gets all the girls. Therein lies the problem. John has been seeing three girls at one time — Heather (Ashanti), a cheerleader; Beth (Bush), a “free spirit”; and Carrie (Kebbel) a smart, ambitious girl — and lying to all of them. When the girls find out about each other, they’re furious and decide to get even with John by ruining his social life. They try various stunts, but nothing works because John’s got the golden touch and comes out on top no matter what happens to him.
Their final plan involves making John fall in love with Kate (Snow) so he can have his heart broken just like they did. Now how many times have you seen this particular set-up in a teen movie before? Uh huh, too many to count.
So yeah, the plot wasn’t original and most of the time the characters didn’t seem like real teenagers. Nevertheless, they were all likable, which made the movie somewhat tolerable.
The biggest shock to me in this film was the fact that Jenny McCarthy plays the mother of a teenager! Wasn’t she, like, just the Playmate of the Year and every male’s pinup dream? Nope, I guess not. I had to look it up and that was way back in 1993. Yikes, how time flies!!!