Review: John Tucker Must Die

John Tucker Must Die is the first blockbuster I know of to be released that feels as though it was made by a member of its target audience.  Assembled with the same cheery tone and glamorized view of its cast of bubble-gum-popping characters that saturate hundreds of junior-high video-projects each schoolyear, one would assume its writer/director to be a fourteen-year-old girl rather than the middle-aged Betty Thomas (I Spy, 28 Days). As a result, I was never quite able to enjoy it—I belong to pretty much the polar-opposite moviegoing demographic—but I sort of admired Thomas’ intentions at the same time. Why tip-toe around the idea of making a film for a specific group of people when such is a clear motivation in bringing a given script to life? It would be elitist of one to pretend that any motion-picture has the ability to appeal to everyone.

However, while I can’t fault its selective aspirations, I can criticize John Tucker Must Die’s uninspired enactment of a recycled story. The plot: a group of girls who were all cheated on by two-timing high-school-basketball-star John Tucker decide to lead a mean-spirited plan of revenge to publically humiliate him. Then…well, that’s about it—tried and true, clichéd and conventional. There are a few admirable elements of the film: in addition to Thomas’ breezy direction, I enjoyed some of the cast-members’ performances, especially that of lead Brittany Snow. Otherwise, the movie’s unoriginality permeates through its surface, causing it to be an entirely ho-hum experience for both its well-intended target-audience (or at least the reasonably-intelligent portion of such) and everyone else. I suppose John Tucker Must Die represents a minor milestone because of its upfront, respectable intentions, but it’s also about the stalest, most unoriginal milestone I’ve ever seen.