Never Been Kissed

Never Been Kissed
April 9, 1999
Fox
Comedy, Romance
VHS
D

I liked this movie at the time.  Otherwise I wouldn't have bought it, admittedly for under $1.  But when I last watched it, I was very disappointed.  And this time it seemed even worse.  On the surface, it seems like my kind of movie: it's the '90s but with '80s nostalgia, it's got Drew Barrymore, and it's a rom-com mixed with a teen comedy.  But it is in fact the worst movie in my collection in almost 30 years (since George Hamilton's Togetherness from 1970).

It's hard to know where to start, but let's talk about Barrymore and her character of Josie Geller, and the glaring anachronisms.  Barrymore was 24 at this point, so watching the movie again (I'd blocked out a lot) I was surprised that Josie had flashbacks with an '83ish soundtrack (e.g. Lauper's "She Bop").  This would make her my generation or maybe a bit older.  But then late in the film we find out that Josie is supposed to be 25, in 1999.  This means she graduated in '91 or '92.  I can see fudging things a bit in The Wedding Singer and Romy & Michele, because, let's face it, pop music was better in '83 than in '85 or '87.  (I've maintained, since the time, that "Say Say Say" was the last great pop song until the B-52s made their comeback with "Love Shack" et al.)  But come on!  If the script had made Josie older, or if they had wanted to contrast the early '90s with the late '90s, that would've been interesting.  But it's just one among many signs that the writers have no clue about teens of any generation.

Now, I'm not going to argue that Romy & Michele or 10 Things I Hate have a documentary-like realism about them.  They are pop fluff, but they're intelligent pop fluff that gets at some level of relatable truth.  This film in contrast does not have a moment in it that is believable even within its own poorly constructed world.  This might be OK if there was a surreal campiness about it, like in Grease 2, but the movie just isn't fun.  It's not even occasionally enjoyably unfun, like Different Strokes sometimes was.  I can't even hate it because I feel too sorry for it.

10 Things I Dislike About This Movie

1. Garry Marshall, as the publisher who sends Josie on the assignment to pretend to be a high school student, shows he hasn't exactly grown as an actor in the three decades since How Sweet It Is!
2. There are a lot of other unfunny and unappealing staff at the Chicago Sun-Times.  (Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, because he thought Barrymore was great.  Well, I guess I did, too, at the time.)
3. Josie is supposed to be a highly intelligent person but she does remarkably stupid things throughout.
4. Her "romance" with the teacher is generic and annoying, especially the big countdown to a public kiss.
5. The only other teacher featured is the subject of an unfunny menopause joke.
6. The popular kids are either forgettable or miscast, especially the interchangeable popular girls and the emo boy pretending to be the BMOC.
7. As in Zapped Again, there is a beautiful "plain" nerd-girl, but instead of getting her soulmate nerd-boy, she pines for the utterly unappealing B-emo-C.  (Lucy wouldn't put up with this shit!)
8. Josie's brother Rob (David Arquette in an almost likable performance) decides mid-movie to attend the same high school, even though he's 23, in order to help make her popular and win himself a baseball scholarship.  (The school has security check-in but anyone can enroll at any age.)
9. Everyone gets mad at Rob for lying to them, but they all forgive Josie when she writes a fawning, un-bitter article about how wonderful high school was this time around.  They even root for her to get with the teacher!
10. The soundtrack, whether oldies or then newbies, is tired and blah.

Molly Shannon as Josie's friend Anita would have better material to work with in Wet Hot American Summer.   Carmen Llywelyn plays Rob's Girlfriend and was Kim (the girl Alyssa kisses at the club) in Chasing Amy.  Pretty Brunette High School Student Priscilla Cory was Pretty Brunette Hostess in The Wedding Singer, although she was in fact 38 by this point.  Allen Covert, Roger in Op-Ed here, was Sammy there.  Derek Morgan was a CIA Agent in Wag the Dog and is Armcast Henson here.  Lucas MacFadden (of the band Ozomatli) plays himself here but would be Chemistry Teacher in the far superior teen comedy Juno.


(Any resemblance to high school is purely imaginary.)

How Sweet It Is!

How Sweet It Is!
August 21, 1968
Cherokee Productions
Comedy
VHS
C+

Speaking of big-screen sitcoms....Well, OK, this Jerry-Paris-directed movie is less like a '60s sitcom than Did You Hear the One...? was, and more like a very extended episode of Love American Style (which would premiere the next year).  It's a little surprising to find that the book it's based on, The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini, came out as far back as '61, but that may explain the title change, since by '68 movie titles with the word "bikini" in them sounded a bit dated.  (Even It's a Bikini World was pushing it in '67, and that was made in '65.)  Debbie Reynolds is the title character, and looks quite fetching in the bikini, but she is 36 at this point and playing a woman of her own age, with a 15-year-old son.  Her husband, played by James Garner, thinks she looks indecently exposed, especially when she wears the bikini in a pool with a seductive Frenchman.  Meanwhile, a pretty tour guide is flirting with Garner, although he doesn't fall for her as Moondoggie did in Gidget Goes to Rome.  Also meanwhile, their son (who wears a peace necklace and has hair scandalously down to his chin) has his own love troubles.  This leads to the whole family winding up in the middle of a whorehouse brawl.

The movie is another example of the mainstream trying to cope with changing times, so it isn't particularly sweet.  You might hope for camp, and there is a bit, but the energy is off.  There are lots of jokes that misfire, like one that I think is about a lesbian having a riding crop.  I don't like that we're supposed to admire hot-tempered Garner, who threatens people, including his wife, with violence, and think that his sensitive son, who believes in not only peace but honesty and freedom in relationships, needs to grow up and "become a man."  The main enjoyment I got out of the movie was the music, including the Mamas & Papas-like title song, and the supporting cast, including of course many TV faces.

This was co-written by Garry Marshall, who does a voiceover as a belching young man and then later appears in the brothel in a baseball uniform.  Yes, that's Garry kid sister Penny, then 24 but passing for 16, as one of the girls on the tour.  And, yes, the little girl who answers the pay phone in the park is 7-year-old Erin Moran, the future Joanie Cunningham.

Paul Lynde steals a few scenes as the purse-lipped purser, while Terry-Thomas steals $1000 of Reynolds's savings and then of course disappears from the movie.  This time Vito Scotti plays the cook who kisses Reynolds on the stomach when she flashes her bikini.  Myrna Ross, formerly one of Von Zipper's Mice in the Beach Party movies, shows up as an "Agatzi girl" (working for Gino Conforti, later of Three's Company).  Another hooker, Eve Bruce, was a harem girl in John Goldfarb.  Walter Brooke, who plays Garner's henpecked boss, is better known for advising on plastics in The Graduate.

Alexandra Hay, who plays the "Are you sure you're 16?"-year-old Gloria would have a more prominent role as Darlene Banks, the hippie daughter of Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing, in Skidoo.  Johnny Silver, who plays "zipper man," would be Dr. Blinky and Ludicrous Lion in both the Pufnstuf show and film.

It is a turquoise bikini in the movie.  And, no, I don't know why they changed Garner's reaction.