Plot/Cast/Characters
It’s high school graduation, and the lives of six teens are about to change in a big way at the end of school party.
There is Preston Meyers, (Ethan Embry, hot off his Empire Records fame) who is leaving for college the next day, he has been in love with Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt) since as long as he can remember.
His best friend is Denise Fleming (Lauren Ambrose), who is the school outcast, who makes herself an outcast, but then bummed no one knows her. She finds herself locked in a bathroom with Kenny Fisher (Seth Green), the ‘homeboy’ wannabe who she grew up with. Kenny is also trying his best to lose his V card at the party.
Amanda has just been dumped by high school jock Mike Dexter (Peter Facinelli), who only has eyes for the girls who are going to be in college next year.
Finally there is William Lichter (Charlie Korsmo), the class over achiever who only wants one thing. Revenge on Mike for years of torment… and has the perfect plan for it.
The cast mostly were either big(ish) names at the time, or would go on to have stellar careers in television. Korsmo himself would go and get a PhD living up to the Lichtner name!
Supporting cast include; Melissa Joan Hart, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, Jenna Elfman, Selma Blair, Jerry O’Connell, Jason Segal among others.
Breakdown
This was one of the first time’s I watched this movie since I bought the DVD way back in around 1999 – so watching it as someone who had not yet graduated high school, to someone with a high school aged child is… well strange…
Written and directed by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, it doesn’t really follow the ‘traditional’ narrative – other than introduces us to the ‘6’ characters and their own separate ‘plans’ etc for a post high school life.
There is fun dialogue throughout, and each of the characters have their own ‘misadventure’ of sorts (Preston wants to call Barry Manilow on the radio to find out if Mandy is about a dog, getting into a philosophical conversation with an Angel dancer, Kenny and Denise get stuck in a bathroom together, and hash out old history, Amanda questions her dating history and who she is with her cousin – who takes her friendly nature for something else, William becomes ultra popular due to his friendly drunken attitude as well as his amazing rendition of Paradise City, and Mike becomes the unpopular one because he broke up with Amanda).
There are some clear nods to movies of the 80’s including Ferris Bueller (with Preston’s fourth wall break to camera while he tells one his flashback stories).
There is the cliche bad time/mistaken identity moments where Preston walks in on Amanda being kissed by her cousin, and then Amanda yelling at Preston before he gets to tell her about the letter he wrote her years ago… that she just happened to stumble onto after it travels all through the party to get to her. She does spend a little too long with the letter trying to find him, I thought this should have been put later into the film and cut out some of the filler (but then we wouldn’t have the funny scenes with Sara Rue as the ‘sheep’ girl and a very early role for Jason Segel as ‘Watermelon guy’)
Speaking of cast roles, some of their credited characters are listed as “girl whose party it is”, “reminiscing guy” and “klepto kid”.
There is an amazing soundtrack that takes me back to my teen years – and I got all the nostalgia in hearing some of my favourite songs from the late 90’s.
The epilogue of the next day is mostly nice, as it sets up (and reveals in a John Hughes way) the futures of the characters. Some are sweet (Kenny/Denise), but I didn’t care for the Preston/Amanda becoming a thing. I thought it would have been a better outcome if they didn’t but hinted they could. I also thought this was a wasted use of the one F bomb.
Overall
Still a semi sweet late teen film, that is universal in how timeless it is.
Some solid performances from a cast that would mostly go on to big things in their television career.
A slight change to the Preston/Amanda letter story point and their “Hollywood” ending would have improve this.
3.5/5
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