The press kit for the film "Not Another Teen Movie" comes in a folder that intentionally resembles a school binder, the kind in which most of us kept our class notes during high school.
Believe it or not, that's as close as the film — or anything related to it — ever comes to being clever.
So, if you don't find that amusing, chances are you won't find anything else to even snicker about in this tasteless send-up of teen-oriented comedies, which is a spiritual cousin to "Scary Movie" and its even more insipid sequel. In fact, "Teen Movie's" by-committee script even comes from two "Scary Movie" writers.
In less than 90 minutes, the movie brings up several important questions: First, what's the point of sending up movies that were supposedly skewering conventions in the first place (such as "Bring it On" and "10 Things I Hate About You")? And with its specific references to older films, as well as some of Freddie Prinze Jr.'s less-than-successful movies, what is the point of parodying something the target audience won't remember?
The plot is a "She's All That" retread (ho-ho), with newcomer Chris Evans taking on the Prinze role. He stars as Jake Wyler, the most popular student at John Hughes High School. Having been dumped by popular cheerleader Priscilla (Jaime Pressly), Jake foolishly makes a bet that he can turn any student into a prom queen, just by going out with her.
So his pals pick the girl least likely to become prom queen — Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh), an unpopular and decidedly unglamorous student who seems to have a grudge against Jake.
It would be easy to assign most of the blame for this mess on the script, but another major culprit here is Joel Gallen, a former MTV exec whose idea of "direction" is to drive a joke into the ground and continue to milk it long after it has become annoying. (Case in point — a severely unfunny cameo by the clearly slumming Molly Ringwald.)
Of course, he's left adrift by his cast members — few of whom have any comic chops (especially the good-looking but impossibly bland Evans and Leigh).
"Not Another Teen Movie" is rated R for crude humor involving sex and body functions (including sight gags and verbal references), frequent use of strong profanity, violence (slapstick involving sports and fights), both female and brief male nudity, simulated sex acts (done for laughs), brief drug use (marijuana), brief gore and scattered use of racial epithets. Running time: 82 minutes.
E-MAIL: jeff@desnews.com