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According to popular media, which hasn't yet led any of us astray, the way to emotional health is to always tell everyone else what's on your mind and in your heart.
For instance, I wish I were eating a maple bar right now and also that I secretly didn't pay homeless men to write these for me, because those guys don't know how to keep their mouths shut and I really can't handle one more body on my conscience. Or in my basement. I can't even get down the stairs anymore.
Seriously though, the reason this is a winning strategy is because women love it when you tell them you love them even though you've never spoken to them before. They can't keep their hands off a man too intimidated to say "Hello." That's why we've got so many "nerd gets girl" movies like I Love You, Beth Cooper. That, and blatant pandering and wish fulfillment.
At his high school graduation, dorkmonster valedictorian Paul Rust declares his love for Hayden Panettiere, the girl he's been silently pining over for years. She takes it pretty well, but brawny military boyfriend Shawn Roberts is rather less impressed.
He gets downright homicidal when Panettiere accepts an invitation to Rust's graduation party. In the ensuing battle, Rust, Panettiere, and the various sidekicks they call friends are chased off into the woods, leading to the wildest night of their lives.
But remember, Rust is an 18th-level nerd whose wildest night prior to this was probably the time he stayed up until midnight drawing Smurfette naked, so don't get your hopes too high. You could blame I Love You, Beth Cooper's tameness on its PG-13 rating -- seriously now, we don't go to these movies to not see naked people -- but its problems run deeper than that.
Yeah, like it's not all that funny. Some people will tell you it's not that important for a comedy to be funny, but when it comes to comedies I am, as in all things, a staunch traditionalist, and I've gotta stand firm on this one.
It's not that its jokes are painful to sit through, it's that they're too common and broad to provoke any of those strange seal-noises you humans call "laughter." Pop quiz: are gags where the hero gets chased by a cute furry animal a) the cutting edge of hilarity or b) so old and busted they were getting booed when cave men were painting them on cave walls?
Beth Cooper abounds with such farcical slapstick, making it pretty damn weird that it also spends so much time trying (mainly in vain) to create some emotional resonance for its characters. This is likely because of the screenplay being adapted by Larry Doyle from his own novel. I'm not very familiar with books -- the only time I see one is when I'm tearing it in half to the applause of a room full of ladies -- but I understand they often spend many thousand words making the people in them feel real.
Under most circumstances, I'm totally down with that. That's something I see and I say "I like this." But it's hard to get into a movie when it can't decide whether it wants to make you laugh at 'roided-out lunatics hurling kitchen appliances through walls or be taken seriously for its touching stories about the loss of Panetierre's brother.
The honest concern for its characters builds a certain amount of goodwill that's promptly drop-kicked the next time it makes a laughless joke. By the time Beth Cooper's unclimax crawls to a close, it feels about 20 minutes too late.
Grade: C
