I Love You, Beth Cooper English Movie
Genre: Comedy
Release Date: July 10, 2009
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Cynthia Stevenson, Hayden Panettiere, Samm Levine, Alan Ruck, Lauren London
Director: Chris Columbus
Producer: Jennifer C. Blum, Michael Flynn, Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan, Mark Radcliffe
Reviews
A nerdy valedictorian proclaims his love for the hottest and most popular girl in school - Beth Cooper - during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life.
As long as there are nerds among us, they will seek their revenge. The pimply-faced debate captain lusting after the head cheerleader is an archetype nearly as durable as the hero’s journey or the star-crossed lovers. In his debut novel, “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” Larry Doyle, a television writer whose credits include (promisingly) “The Simpsons” and (less so) “Beavis and Butt-Head,” gives a 21st-century gloss to this familiar tale.“I Love You, Beth Cooper” is less a novel than a novelization of a movie not yet made, a bibliography of teenage-loser angst, bursting with film and song references ranging from the movies “Rushmore” and “Porky’s” to the bands Simple Minds and Kiss. What Doyle’s story lacks in originality, however, it makes up for in laughs. He is, as his credits suggest, wickedly funny, though he veers wildly from the refreshingly high to the disturbingly low, and readers over 20 may have to rely on Google to translate topical references (as a drunken character advises doing.Denis Cooverman — valedictorian, debate team captain, nerd extraordinaire — uses the occasion of his high school graduation speech to tell the head cheerleader, “I love you, Beth Cooper.” In one of Doyle’s too few subversions of the genre, Beth is touched by Denis’s sincerity. Unfortunately, her violent boyfriend, Kevin, on furlough from the Army, is not. Denis, Beth and assorted friends spend the novel trying to stay out of the homicidal Kevin’s grasp, as an evening of unlikely romance unfolds.
Denis’s journey is often tedious and the writing can be surprisingly lazy. (“Denis stood at attention, like a waiter in an unfun restaurant”). And when Doyle aims low, you’ll be shocked by just how low he can go. He sprays his jokes constantly and indiscriminately, and too many go wide of the mark. A running joke that involves Denis’s face getting beaten into an increasingly unrecognizable pulp is gratuitously cruel and — worse — not funny.
But when Doyle nails it, he’s hilarious. Imagining circumstances where Beth might surrender to his charms, Denis concocts this one: “If Beth went to an all-girls school in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by mountains, hundreds of miles from any other guys except Denis, son of the math teacher, and Beth was failing algebra, for example.”
Reformed nerds will surely wince at Doyle’s spot-on portrayals of Denis, who can “recall Klingon soliloquies with queasy accuracy,” and of his wacky sidekick, the ineptly closeted, towel-snapping, movie-quoting Rich Munsch. “She invited band people,” Rich observes indignantly, crashing the big graduation party. “She invited mathletes — but not us!”
But whereas Rich is any of a dozen John Hughes movie stereotypes, Denis and Beth are both rendered with sensitivity and depth. Doyle is especially good at revealing what lies in the heart of the Popular Girl; Beth is no vapid simpleton. And Denis has more going on than “Star Wars” and chaos theory. In a lull in the evening’s madcap adventures, he realizes graduation has “done nothing to loosen the brackets of the teen taxonomy they had all lived inside since the sixth grade.”
That a 48-year-old is so up-to-the-minute with teenage vernacular is either impressive or creepy, depending on your point of view. How you’ll respond to “I Love You, Beth Cooper” can probably be forecast by how much, if anything, names like Enid Coleslaw and Tommy Turner and song lyrics like “Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial” mean to you. Either way, you’ll need a high tolerance for frequent appearances of Doyle’s inner Butt-Head while you await the more rewarding glimpses of his inner Bart.
When a geeky high-school valedictorian (Paul Rust) throws caution to the wind by expressing his love for a popular cheerleader (Hayden Panettiere) during his graduation speech, life finally starts to get interesting in this coming-of-age comedy adapted from the book by journalist/author/screenwriter Larry Doyle.
'A nerdy valedictorian proclaims his love for the hottest and most popular girl in school – Beth Cooper (Panettiere) – during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life.'
I Love You, Beth Cooper is an upcoming July 2009 comedy directed by Chris Columbus. It is based on the book by the same name, written by Larry Doyle.A nerdy valedictorian proclaims his love for the most popular girl in school – Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere)– during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life.
Based on the best-selling 2007 novel by Larry Doyle (The Simpsons), Cooper follows a sad-sack valedictorian (Semi-Pro's Rust) who reveals his true feelings for the titular cheerleader (Heroes' Panettiere) at graduation and then embarks on a long night of postgrad partying with her. For Columbus, the film marks a return to the teen-comedy genre he left for dramas (Stepmom) and big-budget spectacles such as the first two Harry Potter adaptations. ''I thought about Adventures in Babysitting and about how much fun I had making that film,'' says Columbus of his 1987 directorial debut. ''Over the years, so many people have told me how that movie meant a lot to them growing up.'' Doyle acknowledges that his plot may sound familiar. ''The story is about the cheerleader and the nerd — I'm not going to pretend like it's never been done,'' he admits. ''Although specific things change, you can go back 100 years and find teenagers doing the same things. Kids doing crazy s--- in cars just never goes away.''
As long as there are nerds among us, they will seek their revenge. The pimply-faced debate captain lusting after the head cheerleader is an archetype nearly as durable as the hero’s journey or the star-crossed lovers. In his debut novel, “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” Larry Doyle, a television writer whose credits include (promisingly) “The Simpsons” and (less so) “Beavis and Butt-Head,” gives a 21st-century gloss to this familiar tale.“I Love You, Beth Cooper” is less a novel than a novelization of a movie not yet made, a bibliography of teenage-loser angst, bursting with film and song references ranging from the movies “Rushmore” and “Porky’s” to the bands Simple Minds and Kiss. What Doyle’s story lacks in originality, however, it makes up for in laughs. He is, as his credits suggest, wickedly funny, though he veers wildly from the refreshingly high to the disturbingly low, and readers over 20 may have to rely on Google to translate topical references (as a drunken character advises doing.Denis Cooverman — valedictorian, debate team captain, nerd extraordinaire — uses the occasion of his high school graduation speech to tell the head cheerleader, “I love you, Beth Cooper.” In one of Doyle’s too few subversions of the genre, Beth is touched by Denis’s sincerity. Unfortunately, her violent boyfriend, Kevin, on furlough from the Army, is not. Denis, Beth and assorted friends spend the novel trying to stay out of the homicidal Kevin’s grasp, as an evening of unlikely romance unfolds.
Denis’s journey is often tedious and the writing can be surprisingly lazy. (“Denis stood at attention, like a waiter in an unfun restaurant”). And when Doyle aims low, you’ll be shocked by just how low he can go. He sprays his jokes constantly and indiscriminately, and too many go wide of the mark. A running joke that involves Denis’s face getting beaten into an increasingly unrecognizable pulp is gratuitously cruel and — worse — not funny.
But when Doyle nails it, he’s hilarious. Imagining circumstances where Beth might surrender to his charms, Denis concocts this one: “If Beth went to an all-girls school in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by mountains, hundreds of miles from any other guys except Denis, son of the math teacher, and Beth was failing algebra, for example.”
Reformed nerds will surely wince at Doyle’s spot-on portrayals of Denis, who can “recall Klingon soliloquies with queasy accuracy,” and of his wacky sidekick, the ineptly closeted, towel-snapping, movie-quoting Rich Munsch. “She invited band people,” Rich observes indignantly, crashing the big graduation party. “She invited mathletes — but not us!”
But whereas Rich is any of a dozen John Hughes movie stereotypes, Denis and Beth are both rendered with sensitivity and depth. Doyle is especially good at revealing what lies in the heart of the Popular Girl; Beth is no vapid simpleton. And Denis has more going on than “Star Wars” and chaos theory. In a lull in the evening’s madcap adventures, he realizes graduation has “done nothing to loosen the brackets of the teen taxonomy they had all lived inside since the sixth grade.”
That a 48-year-old is so up-to-the-minute with teenage vernacular is either impressive or creepy, depending on your point of view. How you’ll respond to “I Love You, Beth Cooper” can probably be forecast by how much, if anything, names like Enid Coleslaw and Tommy Turner and song lyrics like “Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial” mean to you. Either way, you’ll need a high tolerance for frequent appearances of Doyle’s inner Butt-Head while you await the more rewarding glimpses of his inner Bart.
When a geeky high-school valedictorian (Paul Rust) throws caution to the wind by expressing his love for a popular cheerleader (Hayden Panettiere) during his graduation speech, life finally starts to get interesting in this coming-of-age comedy adapted from the book by journalist/author/screenwriter Larry Doyle.
'A nerdy valedictorian proclaims his love for the hottest and most popular girl in school – Beth Cooper (Panettiere) – during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life.'
I Love You, Beth Cooper is an upcoming July 2009 comedy directed by Chris Columbus. It is based on the book by the same name, written by Larry Doyle.A nerdy valedictorian proclaims his love for the most popular girl in school – Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere)– during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life.
Based on the best-selling 2007 novel by Larry Doyle (The Simpsons), Cooper follows a sad-sack valedictorian (Semi-Pro's Rust) who reveals his true feelings for the titular cheerleader (Heroes' Panettiere) at graduation and then embarks on a long night of postgrad partying with her. For Columbus, the film marks a return to the teen-comedy genre he left for dramas (Stepmom) and big-budget spectacles such as the first two Harry Potter adaptations. ''I thought about Adventures in Babysitting and about how much fun I had making that film,'' says Columbus of his 1987 directorial debut. ''Over the years, so many people have told me how that movie meant a lot to them growing up.'' Doyle acknowledges that his plot may sound familiar. ''The story is about the cheerleader and the nerd — I'm not going to pretend like it's never been done,'' he admits. ''Although specific things change, you can go back 100 years and find teenagers doing the same things. Kids doing crazy s--- in cars just never goes away.''
