John Tucker Must Die

Several critics acknowledge that it is difficult for a serious adult male to review a movie, like John Tucker Must Die, which is aimed at mindless teenage girls. But John Anderson of Newsday has no such compunctions. Anderson notes that the movie is set at a high school that "is less an institution of learning than it is a sanitarium for the chronically aroused. Having apparently adopted a policy of 'No child's behind left behind,' Forest Hills High is a debauch on the brink of an orgy." The school, he continues, is a fitting setting to confirm "two things moviegoers have long suspected: 1) That all teenagers care about is sex, and 2) That what gets the go-ahead in contemporary Hollywood isn't a movie that will be entertaining, or even make sense, but one whose concept -- and only its concept -- can most easily be sold." Anderson even predicts that the movie will beat Pirates this weekend, because "it has everything the marketing department at Fox, or any studio, dreams about. Good-looking young people to put on the poster and a theme that appeals to audiences' worst instincts." In short, he concludes, it represents "everything that's wrong with movies today." Michael Booth in the Denver Post writes that he brought his 11- and 14-year-old kids with him to the screening "and could barely keep my mind on the movie for all my embarrassment." On the other hand, Jessica Reaves in the Chicago Tribune concludes that the film is "reasonably entertaining. It boasts admirable self-awareness and a higher-than-average cultural IQ."

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