About halfway through I Love You, Beth Cooper, I went out to get a refill on my soda. At the refill station, I overheard a couple of the theater employees talking about Bruno. I joined in the conversation, and we started recalling our favorite moments. Talking about the movie I had seen yesterday was more fun than the movie I was presently watching. If I could, I would have preferred to have continued the conversation, rather than walk back into the theater and finish watching the movie.

But, I soldiered on, returned to my seat, and watched the rest of the movie. Now I can report that Beth Cooper is one of the most misguided and misdirected teen comedies to come along in a while. It's as if the movie had been designed to rub me the wrong way. Let's start with the film's hero, Denis Cooverman. He's supposed to be a geeky and nerdy high school student, but he's not the likable sort of nerdy type. He's kind of rat-faced, and he talks with this nasally tone of voice that grated on me. The fact that he's played by a 28-year-old actor named Paul Rust, who looked too old to be playing the character to begin with, didn't help matters. The character is whiny, annoying, and seems like a bad cliche come to life. If he's bad, his best friend is worse. The best friend is Rich Munsch (Jack Carpenter), a character whose running gag is that he may or may not be gay, and that he is an obsessive film geek. He's so obsessive, he constantly quotes movie lines in his dialogue, then lists the movie it's from, who directed it, and the year it came out. I have met many film geeks in my life, and have had the good fortune to never meet anyone who felt the need to talk like Rich does in this movie. That's the first problem - They don't talk like real people. These are sitcom characters, and not very good ones. Besides, someone should inform Rich that Scarface with Al Pacino came out in 1983, not 82 as he claims at one point.

Onto the plot - It's Graduation Day at their high school, and Denis has been chosen to give the speech to his classmates before the diplomas are handed out. Rich has convinced his friend to confess his true feelings for Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere from TV's Heroes) in his speech. Beth is the head cheerleader, the most popular girl in school, and Denis has secretly pined for her since the 7th Grade. The only problem? Beth is dating a coked up, violent, anti-social military reject named Kevin (Shawn Roberts). Denis takes his chances, confesses his feelings for Beth in front of the entire school, and also decides to air out his feelings about some of his other classmates, such as the kid who always bullied him, and the stuck up girl who was always mean to him. Watch this scene, and you can see so many ways that it goes wrong. Hardly anyone in the audience reacts while Denis is going on and venting his personal feelings and frustrations. There are some uncomfortable glances from the few people he points out, but everyone else seems to be silent and static. You would think there'd be cheering, or laughing, or the teachers would be trying to wrestle the microphone out of his hand. But no, everyone just sits there, not even reacting. Maybe they all read the script in advance, so they're not surprised when Denis turns the speech into an opportunity to air his personal dirty laundry.

This is an early omen of bad things to come. There are many sequences in Beth Cooper that are badly staged and carried out that you'd think the people involved had no experience making films. Sadly, this is not true. The director is Chris Columbus, who has been making movies for over 20 years, and directed the first two Harry Potter films. The writer is Larry Doyle, who used to write for The Simpsons. He also wrote the novel the movie is based on. I've not read it, and probably won't be going out of my way to correct that fact. The plot seems to be a Frankenstein's Monster made up of the various parts of past teen comedies, mostly the 80s library of John Hughes. Doyle has the formula down, but he has sucked out all the charm, pacing, and humor out of it. Hughes would have made these characters interesting, or at least human. The movie does try to humanize these people. They get some moments where they open up and are supposed to be revealing they're deeper than we initially thought, but it doesn't work, due to the heavy handed tone of these moments. The false tone of these scenes actually managed to make me hate these characters even more.

Back to the plot - After Denis' declaration of love, Beth and her two girlfriends stop by his house. Apparently the speech struck some kind of chord with her. Unfortunately, Kevin and his henchmen have followed her, and try to kill Denis. The kids escape with their lives, and the remainder of the movie follows Denis, Beth, Rich, and Beth's friends as they hit graduation parties, hang out, and open up to each other. The main hook of the movie is that Denis is supposed to see Beth for the person she truly is, not just an object of desire, by the end of the night. Beth is also supposed to open her eyes to his charms as well. The problem is, the movie never seems to have a firm grasp on the characters. They change personalities depending on the current mood of the screenplay. One moment, they're opening up about how no one understands them and they feel isolated, the next they're tipping cows and falling over manure. Beth Cooper, in particular, goes through so many personality shifts and mood swings during the course of the film, I was waiting for the scene to come that would reveal she suffers from multiple personalities. Sometimes she's sweet and sympathetic, sometimes she's sexy and manipulative (she performs an off camera sexual act on a clerk at a store so she can get liquor without I.D.), but most of the time she seems to have a death wish, judging by the fact she constantly drives recklessly, cutting off other drivers and smashing into anything that's not glued to the ground. Despite her best efforts, Panettiere never locks into a stable performance that we believe in.

The comedy feels forced and off-key throughout. Not only did I not like these characters, I wasn't laughing with them or at them. They were just unpleasant. The movie almost seems to realize this, and jumps through hoops to make them sympathetic in the last half hour or so. They hang out at a cabin that belongs to a relative, and it's here that Beth and Denis start to open up with each other. We learn that Beth had an older brother who died when she was very young from an unnamed disease (a fact that has little bearing on the character, and seems to come out of left field), and she's afraid her best days are behind her now that high school is over, and she's no longer going to be able to get by on her popularity. Once again, I feel the need to reference John Hughes. Not only did he cover this kind of stuff 20 years ago, he did it better. The moments where the characters are supposed to be the most human seem to be on autopilot. I guess the filmmakers figured why break tradition, since the rest of the movie seems to be as well. The plot is generic, the characters are broad, and there's not a single moment or scene we can't predict the outcome as soon as it starts, and not be right. The timing is also off throughout. It's missing the manic energy that a movie like this needs.
I Love You, Beth Cooper is a surprisingly awful movie made with a surprising amount of ineptitude. I didn't walk in expecting to be blown away, but I didn't expect the movie to just hit the wrong note from the very first scene, and continue all the way down the line. You know you're in trouble when there's a scene concerning the hero's parents using a vibrating cell phone as a sex toy, and it's not the worst scene in the movie. I think that says enough right there.

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