By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * )
Not A Bad Idea, you might think, to take all the plot devices, cliched scenes and standard characters from teen movies. The tasteless sex of American Pie, the high-school romance and prom heartbreak of ... oh yes, you've seen it all before.
You'll get a
laugh or two from the characters who point out that they are cliches, or when the hero bets he can turn a plain girl into a prom queen and the black guy tells him, "You'll lose the bet, but learn valuable lessons". And when subtitles leave spaces for the naughty bits in the compulsory scene with the nude foreign exchange student. You may even enjoy seeing familiar faces from old teen movies, like Molly Ringwald and John Vernon.
In the end you may just be depressed that a movie that sets out to satirise the genre ends up as Just Another Teen Movie.
• DVD features: movie (90min): film-makers' commentary; cast commentary; teen movie factoids; 18 deleted scenes plus the original ending; 3 behind-the-scenes short features; Marilyn Manson's Tainted Love music video; Joel Gallen's first short film, Car Ride; "Test your teen movie I.Q."; auditions montage; meet the cast.
