The Good: Nothing comes to mind
The Bad: Characters, Acting, Plot, Obviousness, An Unrated Edition of a PG-13 flick
The Basics: Meh. Don't watch this stupid teen-oriented movie. It's an insult to anyone with a brain. Or even half a brain.
When I first watched Crash (reviewed here!), I was blown away. I sat up when I was done and I just said, "Damn!" I took some time to digest it, but it's still a heavy movie and I know it has true greatness because it insinuated itself into my dreams (three of the characters ended up there last night). So, yesterday, I thought it might be good to take in something a little lighter. For that experience, I chose John Tucker Must Die.
Damn.
I find it ironic that I have received many comments for my insinuations in some of my reviews for notations against the Christian Coalition attempting to influence mass culture with its "Christian" (actually Paulist) agenda, but no one has ever barked when I've commented on how the millions of dollars spent to make crappy movies in the U.S. encourage terrorists. I mean, c'mon; when you're living in a country where you live in huts or caves, watching your countrymen starve and you hear about how something like Hulk had a multi-million dollar budget, wouldn't you want to blow things up? As I watched John Tucker Must Die, I kept thinking about how I haven't been able to afford a trip to the dentist in years. I suppose my argument would be better if I were living in somewhere like Nebraska; the budget for John Tucker Must Die probably could have paid for a year of Dental coverage for the state of Nebraska.
When a gym coach, swooning over high school legend John Tucker, has a heart attack, gym classes are condensed for the day. This leads Heather, Beth and Carrie to the knowledge that they are all three dating John Tucker. It also leads to a ridiculous and obvious girl fight on the gym floor. Kate Spencer, completely unrelated to any of the three girls, John Tucker or even recent events inspires the three wronged girls to get even with John Tucker as opposed to lashing out at one another. Heather, Beth and Carrie decide that the best way for John to be wronged is to have Kate date him. Kate, of course, begins to fall for John and the whole movie becomes so formulaic that one hopes writer Jeff Lowell is a middle school student and director Betty Thomas was using this film to prove to Hollywood that she could make A movie before they would let her make the masterpiece she hoped to make.
This is a dumb teen movie. Hands down it is unredeemably bad. And rather than go into my usual critique of character, plot and acting, I will condense those three things into the following brief lines before exploring why this movie is unredeemably bad. None of the characters are individuals. They are all types. John Tucker is High School Guy, Kate is Outsider, Heather is Token/Cheerleader, Beth is Easy Hippie, and Carrie is Smart and Serious. All of the acting is awful. I imagine Jesse Metcalfe (who plays John Tucker) was happy to exploit his popularity from Desperate Housewives to get another paycheck. One wonders why pop-singer Ashanti would stoop to acting in this dreck. All of the actors are such obvious Hollywood beautiful so it's just stomach-turning to watch.
My last note on the content exclusively of the movie is that I watched the unrated edition and I have to say that this was a pointless endeavor for me. I don't know what makes a PG-13 movie these days but if you have a PG-13 movie that originally gets an MPAA rating of R and you release the R version on DVD it's not exactly unrated. To rephrase: the last unrated movie I watched was Bound. Bound (reviewed here!) was theatrically released on the art house circuit and the producers simply did not want to risk an X or NC-17, so they avoided the MPAA for ratings. I get that. It's a sexy, bloody movie. The unrated version of John Tucker Must Die might have been unrated simply because is was too stupid to watch. I don't know. There was no nudity, nothing questionable in terms of language, nothing.
Unless you can't show a man in a woman's thong in a PG-13 movie. I don't know.
But that leads me to the larger problems with John Tucker Must Die. I think I ought to add Payback to my permanent collection whatwith how frequently I cite it when mentioning revenge movies. There are, basically, two types of revenge movies. There are revenge movies where the protagonist learns the folly of vengeance (the best hour of television ever, "Duet" from Star Trek Deep Space Nine embodied this) and grows and there are revenge movies where the protagonist does whatever necessary to get vengeance for a wrong and the audience accepts their actions (Payback, Lucky # Slevin).
John Tucker Must Die embodies a failure of either of these basic revenge stories. John Tucker continually thwarts the revenge tactics of the four girls, gaining popularity in the process. When Kate ultimately realizes (though her initial objections indicated she knew all along) that her actions against John Tucker are wrong and pointless, she gives them up and there is no real catharsis. In fact, the resolution to the movie has Tucker - who supposedly learned a lesson as well - simply becoming better at womanizing. Tucker does not grow as a character. None of the characters do. The girls are defined by Tucker, Tucker continues to be a womanizer, he just changes the way he womanizes.
And one of the things that is truly disappointing is the title. This is not John Tucker Must Die, this is "John Tucker Must Not Be Popular At Our School Anymore." The movie might have been interesting if the girls had teamed up to try to kill Tucker. I suppose you can't do a film like that after Columbine. At least not for a PG-13 movie. Hmm . . . there's an unrated movie idea there.
All I have written above is greater analysis than this movie deserves. And should there ever be a sequel, I think Nebraska should storm the production company funding it and get themselves dental.
Sometimes a movie is simply so bad that there is not enough to write to describe its badness. John Tucker Must Die does not deserve your attention. It does not deserve a single word more from me.
For other works with Taylor Kitsch, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Battleship
John Carter
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
1/10
For other movie reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!
© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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