I Love You, Beth Cooper

From the Breakfast Club meets Sixteen Candles meets Weird Science setup ― with a group of mismatched teenagers bonding throughout a night of crazed shenanigans ― to the casting of Alan Ruck (Cameron Frye from Ferris Bueller's Day Off) in the token adult role, I Love You, Beth Cooper does its best to honour the '80s John Hughes oeuvre. While flawed in many ways, the film actually does a decent job of recreating the manic, but heart-warming, dynamic of those classics, proving mainly, in its critical and commercial failure, that genre films are typically a product of their time and don't translate well when approached literally decades later. From the opening scene where the dorky Denis Cooverman (Paul Rust) professes his love for cheerleading hottie Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere), an inelegant humour grounds the car-crashing, cow-tipping hijinks in pseudo-identifiable territory. Denis deals with the disappointing reality of his high school fantasy girl who, in actuality, is a reckless, self-destructive screw-up with little self-worth, while best friend Rich (Jack Carpenter) struggles with coming out of the closet. It is essentially the juxtaposition of zany teen antics with the humanization of seemingly clichéd characters in a somewhat cheesy and tonally incongruous manner. By today's standards, it doesn't work, but contextually it isn't that bad. Anyone willing to take off their detached, ironic hipster glasses might even find a little heart and humour in this tale of crushed high school delusions. Included with the DVD is an alternate ending that features Rich dressing up like a bear and Denis almost killing Beth's cokehead boyfriend, along with a handful of deleted scenes that actually flesh out a couple of scenes that feel choppy. A "Behind the Scenes" featurette and supplement on writer Larry Doyle feature cast interviews and adaptation insights, along with a back-story for Treece's character involving morbid obesity and the invention of the aerosol Cheez-Whiz can. Also included are Fox Movie Channel interviews with the lead actors and an uncomfortable song about peanut butter by Paul Rust.