"Drive Me Crazy" crashes head-on into theaters this weekend as a distinctly mediocre entry in the teen flick boom. Piloted by Adrian Grenier ("Sebastian Cole: Boy Who Sit on Rooftops") and Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina: Girl Who Casts Hexes"), the film scores points by crapping squarely on the heads of the popular kids - although such skewing has become de rigeour of late because to glorify them would just be, well, boring - and spending a goodly amount of time explaining why geeks act the way they do. Unfortunately, all of those points are lost thanks to the pitiful emoting attempted by Hart, the Hollywood yearbook's "girl most likely to goad viewers into homicidal mania."
Armed with a drooping window shade of a lower lip and quite possibly the most irritatingly pitched voice of all time, Hart plays Nicole Maris, a popular girl who has spent an entire semester planning the school dance event of the century and about half that time engineering a surefire hot date to the suaree with Matt Damon doppleganger jock Brad (Gabriel Carpenter). When Brad disregards the established "rules" about the adolescent mating-and-dating dance and doesn't ask Nicole, she swallows he
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| Courtesy of 20th Century Fox Sabrina attempts to cast a love spell in "Drive Me Crazy." |
For his part, Chase puts up a fair fight. His infiltration of the popular kids thanks to a new wardrobe personally selected by Nicole ("I wasn't expecting you to fall in love." "I wasn't expecting you to fall into the Gap!" goes one exchange) is just that: An infiltration. We - and he - never truly believe that he has become one of them, and in a nice twist by writer Rob Thomas, he is given words of encouragement and curiosity by an ex-geek who, thanks to some weight loss and a total image reinvention, has become one of "them."
The best thing about "Drive Me Crazy" is the attention it pays to the supporting geeks. These aren't your typical losers. They're more like the kids you knew or were in high school: The A/V nerd, the designated driver. Played by Kris Park and Mark Webber respectively, these are the characters that actually seem cool, the ones you'd want to know and hang out with, the ones that actually have fun beyond getting wasted on cheap high school beer that the one idiot convenience store clerk in town sells to underage drinkers.
If the film had been about them from the get-go (although they do get some choice scenes and far better dialogue and development than our main daring duo), it might have been a more successful enterprise. Or it just might have devolved into a total morality play on cool vs. uncool. Which it did anyway, so I guess it's a moot point.
As it stands, there are few, if any, surprises to be had in "Drive Me Crazy." Following precedent to the letter, Chase and Nicole hate each other, then almost hook up, then almost break up, then really fall in love, then live happily ever after. What is the point of this? Why do these movies keep getting made? Is it purely for the hideously bad pop-driven soundtracks featuring implant-laden jailbait that the industry sells in tandem with movie tickets? Is it so that more talentless would-be ingenues can plaster their visage across all media, including this one? There may not be any explanation, but I can't help but wonder.
Hart aside, the three boys, Grenier, Park and Webber push the film above the heaping pile of suck that their female counterpart embodies. A clean-shaven Grenier looks suspiciously like a darker version of Leonardo Di Caprio, and he plays the role of the not-quite-wannabe with as much style as he can muster. But even the subjugated testosterone represented by these three cannot completely save "Drive Me Crazy." At best it is an in all ways typical version of "Pygmalion" (done recently, and better, in "She's All That"). At worst, it is a glamour video for Melissa Joan Hart and her mismatched body parts. The law of averages is kind.
10-01-99
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