John Tucker Must Die

Review by: Doc

is cliché, but it is cliché done well...
Brittany Snow stars in the latest version of what I call the Mean Girls High School Movie. She is Kate, the invisible, anonymous, blonde beauty who flies below the radar in school after school as her mother, Jenny McCarthy, moves her from town to town. Mom responds to serial heartbreak with chocolate icing binges and a break for a new horizon and a new guy. Kate calls all her Mom’s men, “Skip” since they sneak out of the house in the wee hours and skip out on them both.


In her latest school she takes note of the titular John Tucker, BMOC and flourishing lothario, played by Jesse Metcalf, of Desperate Housewives gardening fame. He’s currently juggling head cheerleader Heather (Ashanti), vegan activist Beth (Sophia Bush), and budding newswoman Carrie (Arielle Kebbel). The best line of the movie belongs to Ms. Bush who, having snagged her dress on Tucker’s moving car, bemoans, “He gets me out of my skirt even when he’s not my date!”
Unfortunately for Tucker, all three are placed on the same volleyball team with Kate and his philandering is revealed. Thus, the ladies thirst for revenge and the plot to have Kate break his heart arises.


The plot is predictable, the characters are stock, including Tucker’s hunky little brother who is obviously the intended soulmate of our heroine, and the required climactic party scene is present and accounted for. This is cliché, but it is cliché done well with enough laughs to entertain and an appealing enough cast to make it worth watching. I was pleasantly surprised and give it 3 or 5 scalpels and a chuckling phalanx up.



Doc Hollywood

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