Drove me crazy (Drive Me Crazy (DVD))

Member Name: hugon

Product:	Drive Me Crazy (DVD)
Date:	26/11/01 (83 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's only an hour and a half long

Disadvantages: Unbelievable self-indulgent drivel, Poor script, Poor acting

It was a wet afternoon, I was bored and I decided to watch a movie on pay per view to test out my new ITV Digital box. I vaguely remembered seeing this advertised a year or so ago, it was one of those teen romantic comedies I seem to like so much, but this is one of the direst films I've ever seen in my life, and a complete waste of the £2 I paid to watch it. There are a few spoilers in the opinion, but remember, it's a teen movie, so there's nothing you couldn?t predict anyway.

It's all centred around the prom (as most good teen flicks should be), Nicole (Melissa Joan Hart - Sabrina the teenage witch) wants to take the hunky star of the basketball team to the prom, and has been scheming away for the last few weeks to try and gain his attention and get him in a tux for the event. However, at a basketball match, he falls for one of the cheerleaders, leaving Nicole dateless for the prom.

This forces her to come up with an alternative plan - she decides that she and her next-door neighbour, Chase (Adrien Grenier) should go, pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend. This is handy for both of them, as Chase has just been dumped by his girlfriend, and they figure by making them jealous they can win them back. Of course, you just know they're going to go all dewy eyed and fall for each other. It's that predictable.

Sometimes teen movies can be enjoyable if they're executed correctly and injected with enough humour, even though the plot is more transparent than a pane of glass. Not so this one, there are some feeble attempts at humour, but I can't remember even smiling once during this film, never mind laughing. The only saving grace of the film is that it is less than an hour and a half long, although I found that the time dragged by and I couldn't wait for the film to end. I could have turned over and watch something else, but I'd paid to see this, there was principle at stake here (and the hope it would
actually have some kind of redeeming feature).

Lets start of with the characters. Nicole is part of the popular crowd, you know, the crowd you where never part of at school. She's pretty, smart, and does a bit of presenting on the school's television channel. She's also incredibly irritating. I've never liked Melissa Joan Hart, I've always found her to be a little smug, and I found the character of Nicole to be smug and annoying, and far too self-absorbed. This made me care little about her finding happiness or not, in fact, I think I enjoyed the film more when things where going worse for her. Nicole's friend Alicia (Susan May Pratt) manages to top Nicole in the irritating stakes, her character has a very annoying habit of stating what is happening as if it where a newspaper headline, which is OK once, but second time has you grimacing, and third time wanting to cut out her tongue. You can see her becoming jealous and trying to split Chase and Nicole up from a mile off, and for instead of hating her for doing so, I was actually on her side for messing up little Nicole's idea of a perfect world. But then, I already told you I didn't like Melissa Joan Hart did't I?

Chase is part of the 'alternative' group of school pupils; he's rejected by the popular crowd for being different and refusing to conform to their ideals. He hangs around with Dave (Mark Webber) and Ray (Kris Park), two nerds who seem to be even less popular than he is. Chase is my main gripe of the film - he rebels against the popular crowd for most of his high school life, then Nicole suggests he change his image to become part of the beautiful people and he does it in a nanosecond. I found it rather patronising to believe he could change so quickly. Try to guess the next part of the plot - yep, he falls out with his friends over his sudden imagine change, but guess what? He makes up with them at the end. That gripe with the plot aside, I
found Chase to be one of the best characters in the film. He actually manages to bring a little emotion to his character, and a small part of you is concerned about his happiness - when dumped he actually manages to convince you he's hurt by it all. Dave was my favourite character in the film - he's the ultimate nerd, who will try and help anyone to get them to like him, and as a result of this, he finds himself taken advantage of on most occasions. However, he of course has his moment at the end.

Like I said before, the plot is very obvious, but the film is very poorly paced as well, it's very slow the whole way through, and there are a few occasions where some scenes are put in just fill in some time, they don't affect the story at all, just serve to make the film a more painful experience. The few twists the plot takes to try and throw you off the scent don't really work, they're just as obvious as the outcome of the main plot, and just make it even less convincing. It's filled with clichés, they wheel out practically every teen movie cliché you could think of, you could make a list before you sat down to watch it and tick them off as they occurred, and you'd probably tick off all of them. There are a few attempts at jokes, but they all tend to fall pretty flat.

The acting in a whole is acceptable, though you do feel the characters don't really move out of second gear the entire way through the film. That isn't their fault entirely - the script offers them no real chance to do anything out of the ordinary. The film would be better served trying to explain the relationship between Chase and Nicole - they haven't really had much to do with each other since they where young - at the start, rather than trying to frantically explain it near the end of the film, when the significance of it has been forgotten. Besides the main characters, there is very little in the way of anything else going on - the suppo
rting cast are largely forgotten and play little part in the film for most of the duration, before a few clumsy developments late in the film. The idea of the film is acceptable, but it clearly wasn't developed enough and the plot is very limp and light.

It follows the usual teen traits of all the students living in huge houses, driving expensive cars and having huge wardrobes full of designer labels, going to school (huge grounds, pretty setting), but doing more sitting round talking rather than working, 'hanging out' in cafes after school with all their friends having a great time. I wish I went to a school in a teen movie; my school was pretty lame in comparison. It only serves to grate on your nerves even more, with a decent plot, I wouldn't have focused on this, but with film it just serves to make you even more annoyed.

The only half-decent thing about this film was the soundtrack. Featuring the usual mix of radio-friendly rock and pop (Including Britney Spears - 'Crazy' - original eh? I'm assuming the title was in order to get this song in the soundtrack, as the title doesn't seem to have much to do with the film, unless it's us being driven crazy by the film), but there is a decent band - the Electrocutes, the local band who get to play at the prom.

In short, it?s a highly disappointing film, if you want a good teen film, I'd recommend 10 Things I Hate About You as probably the best recent example, this doesn?t come close, it's tired, boring, patronising and self-indulgent, and only to be watched if you can't find any paint drying near you. If you're looking for saving graces, this film has none. It might appeal to very young teens (although I think only girls - 13 year old boys are going to hate it just as much as I do), but I can?t imagine anybody else finding it remotely interesting.


IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0164114

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