23 April 2009
Stupidest Teen Movie Ideas
Young and dumb and full of….
New teen “comedy” Fired Up is based on a novel premise - two bonehead footballers go to cheerleader camp, so they can study and learn more about the emotional depths of platonic female friends. OK, so only the first half of that synopsis was true, and it leads Fired Up upon a typically unbelievable procession of pretty girls instantly falling for loser guys.
In honour of Fired Up’s mindlesness, Empire went back to film school and drafted a conclusive essay about the stupidest teen movie ideas. You know, those plots or situations in teen movies which, if attempted in the real world, would fail miserably. Read our research below, which breaks the stupid ideas into genre types, or specific movies which were so dumb they warranted a section to themselves. Chug, chug, chug……
The Road Trip
Hitting the open road with a couple of your closest mates sounds like a great idea Going the distance just so you can cover up a huge mistake, usually of a sexual variety, is a recipe for misadventures, gross-out situations and embarrassment. The boys of Road Trip dashed cross-country on a mission to recover an illicit videotape before it was seen by the wrong person. How could that go bad? That little adventure paled in comparison to the multi-country journey that was EuroTrip, the story of one man’s quest to beg forgiveness from a hot German girl he drunkenly accused of being a gay sex pervert. Every man’s story, then. Only Sex Drive, which taught us all a valuable lesson about stranger danger, presented a worse motive for turning on the cruise control and going that extra mile.
Stick it to “The Man”
Every teenager has, at some point, complained of being oppressed by “The Man.” It’s no surprise, then, that many teen flicks revolve around fantasy plots in which “The Man” is conquered by protagonists who’ve only just passed puberty. Please note the term “fantasy” in relation to these hair-brained plots.
In The Perfect Score, a group of mismatched high schoolers decide to stick it to “The Man” by stealing the answers to the SAT, an aptitude test that strikes fear into the heart of anyone American teen who is college-bound. Thanks to their brilliant plan which can only work in the movies, a few underachievers cheat their way to a higher education. Take that, College Board of America!
There are also more literal explorations of this theme, such as John Tucker Must Die, which follows a group of scorned chicks trying to take down a serial cheater. After pumping him full of female hormones fails to knock him off his high horse, they make John fall for the hot new girl. Sounds a little counter-intuitive, don’t you think?
The All Night Party
Admittedly, life was a little different in the 1960s, when the original all-night party, American Graffiti, tookplace. Still, not different enough to make us believe that a group of wily teenagers would be allowed to roam about the streets from dusk ‘til dawn listening to pirate radio and trying to find an elusive blonde woman. Honestly, had they no parents to enforce a strict and reasonable curfew? Geez Louise.
We suspect similarly convenient degrees of parental disregard in Can’t Hardly Wait, which follows a group of high schoolers at a seemingly endless graduation bash. In the very least, the revellers in these films are old enough to be college-bound, unlike the girls of Sleepover, who’ve only just finished year 8 when they get together to steal cars and sneak into nightclubs at one very sleepless slumber party. Hello, discipline? And don’t even get us started on Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Don’t they know Manhattan is a very unsafe place to be after dark?
The Rent-a-Date
This laughable scheme is indeed a horse of many colours. In its most notable incarnation, a dorky, yet surprisingly handsome fellow uses his hard-earned money to pay a popular, yet unsurprisingly shallow hottie to act like his girlfriend. Such was the plot of Can’t Buy Me Love (starring Dr McDreamy, Patrick Dempsey, when he was a gangly ’80s B-grade star) and its lacklustre remake, Love Don’t Cost a Thing. As the titles indicate, both films came with a predictable moral lesson about finding that person who will like you for who you are, not how thick your wallet is. Just like real life.
We saw a twist on this rent-a-date plot in 10 Things I Hate About You, in which a love-struck loser pays Heath Ledger to woo the school’s über-bitch so that he can have a shot at her bubbly little sister. There’s a word for that: pimping.
Other variations substitute money for motive, as in Drive Me Crazy, a contrived story about two recently dumped neighbours who agree to pretend they’re dating in order to make their significant others jealous. Not illegal or amoral, but still totally lame.
Dethrone the Queen Bee
We know Mean Girls is supposed to be one of those funny-because-its-true movies, but those of us who spent our teen years worshipping the likes of Regina George know that girls like her are invincible. Secret plots to upset the social hierarchy just by making the Prom Queen gain a few are as ineffective as they are impractical.
Worse still are the films in which a popular girl turns up dead, conveniently creating room at the top of the pyramid for her jealous gal pals. Winona Ryder started the trend when she poisoned the alpha female in Heathers. Rose McGowan and crew joined the club when they “accidentally” murdered their pretty, perfect friend in Jawbreaker and then tried to make the cops believe that the deed had been done by a rapist. Creepy, controversial and completely ridiculous. Ever tried to get away with murder? It’s tough, kids, it’s tough.
The Gender Swap
Why is it that when a man puts on a wig and dons a dress, or a girl cuts her hair and slips on a tie, everyone magically believes they are indeed of the opposite gender? Well, at least everyone in a lousy teen movie. n fact, aspiring journalist Terri was so convincingly disguised in Just One OfTthe Guys that she was forced to go topless just to prove her true identity to the boy she loved (If you don’t recall, that partial nude scene caused quite a stir back in 1986). That film, much like Amanda Bynes’s soccer-infused “comedy” She’s The Man, was based on Shakespeare’s gender-swapping masterpiece The Twelfth Night, which makes us feel the slightest hint of forgiveness toward them both. Slightly, mind. We’re still talking dunderheaded teens not working out that the girl with the stuck on sideburns isn’t actually a dude.
Male-to-female blunder Sorority Boys - in which three troublesome college slackers get in touch with their feminine side after they are booted out of their fraternity for stealing - has no such claim to literary fame, and thus we have no such reason to look kindly upon it. One word: preposterous.
American Pie Presents (2005 - 2007)
Believe it or not, witnessing Jason Biggs get his just desserts wasn’t the worst part of the American Pie franchise. Following the success of the third instalment, American Wedding, the folks at Universal launched a series of epically awful straight-to-DVD sequels about the sexual misadventures of Steve Stifler’s younger brothers. Yep, his little bros. Trying to find some hos. Ho hum.
When Matt Stifler is sentenced to a summer at Band Camp, he hatches a plan to film guerrilla-style soft-core porn starring the notoriously randy band nerds. Yeah, because there’s a huge market for that.
When Erik Stifler pledges Beta House, he and his brothers are pitted against the all-geek fraternity in a Greek Olympiad. Let’s just say there’s a bit with a sheep that will scar you for life. No, you shouldn’t be trying any of this at home.
The only half-way decent film in this trilogy is The Naked Mile, which was based on an actual run that used to take place annually at the University of Michigan. Still, when was the last time you thiought a nude run would be a smart way to entice the object of your affection? Where will your pot belly hide?
The Girl Next Door (2004)
This film has so many ludicrous issues, we hardly know where to begin. First of all, we highly doubt that a former porn star would magically fall in love with an overachieving high schooler regardless of the proximity of his house to hers. If stuff like that happened in real life, you can bet we’d have heard about it. Secondly, we simply cannot condone a group of underage kids making an X-rated movie, even if it turns out to be a remarkably comprehensive tool for sex educators the world over.
What really gets our goat, though, is the ludicrous happy ending in which the main character, Matt, pulls up to Georgetown in a sleek silver convertible and explains how his foray into adults-only feature films both paid his tuition and landed him the girl of his dreams. OK, so maybe we’re just mad because we’re totally jealous…
Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)
The title says it all. The whole concept of the film was dumb – since when do mindless comedies have prequels? – which turned out even dumberer than anyone could have imagined. This film takes us way back to the 80s to show us how moronic characters made famous by Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels began a goofball friendship that later introduced the world to the bromance. In the spirit of going the extra mile, it also pokes fun at special education in a way that even the original dared not. No wonder the Farrelly Brothers wanted no part of this project.
Swimfan
High school can be a breeding ground for jealousy, there’s no doubt about that. But a breeding ground for obsessive, jealous freaks who stalk hot guys and threaten to murder anyone who comes between them and the object of their desire? Sounds a bit far-fetched, if you ask us. Go ahead, ask us. We’ll tell you.
Complete unlikelihood aside, this film is twisted and unnerving in the worst possible way. We can only wonder at what may have inspired this Fatal Attraction-esque thriller about a mysterious new girl in town who seduces a popular swimmer and then refuses to be forgotten despite his insistence that their steamy sexual encounter in the school pool was only a one-night-stand. Lessons learned: don’t hook up with an over-eager stranger and never, EVER tell a girl you love her when you don’t mean it. The consequences could be dire. We’re talking about real life and death here, people. For real.
Sam Barbosa
