Can’t Hardly Wait

The high school’s most popular girl gets dumped by her boyfriend, who happens to be the most popular guy, on the last day of school right before the last big party before College. Everyone who’s anyone goes to the party that night, from nerds to jocks, hipsters to poseurs, all looking for that last real high before their life of actual responsibilities takes off. Love is in the air, but so is a lot of alcohol and music. Pour over ice, mix well, and drink up!

Completely unoriginal idea for a film scores points for a great soundtrack, a solid cast, a decent characterization of most every stereotype, and a mostly funny, sometimes sentimentally nostalgic look at the last days of the greatest days of most of our lives. Call me a sucker for high school comedies that feature house parties, but this film never bored me through its entire quick runtime, despite its derivative nature, and generally kept me smirking and interested in the lives of the characters presented therein.

For this accomplishment, I must give the props up to two of the actors that portrayed their characters with the most believability and sincerity, that being Ethan Embry and Lauren Ambrose. But don’t get me wrong, the rest of the cast was also quite adequate in their roles, with Seth Green acting out a great fly white-young black-wannabee (a la Gary Oldman in TRUE ROMANCE (10/10), I might add) but these two stood out amongst the plethora of cardboard cutouts plastered through most of this film. Having said that, I think the marketers of the film did a piss-poor job of marketing this film as a Jennifer Love Hewitt vehicle, since first of all, she is barely in it, second of all, is not all that good in it, and third of all, is one of the least interesting characters in the entire picture. I think they might’ve gained a wider diversity of audience, if they were to have introduced more of the characters in the previews, but then again, who am I to argue against a set of gazongas?

All in all, this picture is interesting enough to watch, funny enough to laugh at from time to time, and nostalgic enough to drift your mind off to the days of old for a second or two. Also, the soundtrack of this film really blew me away with its eclectic mix of heavy rock, rap and punk, and any film that has the balls to feature Guns ‘n Roses “Paradise City” as one of its flagship tunes (During one of the best scenes in the film) is allright in my book! Cameos by Jenna Elfman and a dead-ringing jock Jerry O’Connell top this tasty tart of emptiness, and the epilogues of all the featured characters stamp this film as the ultimate impersonation of all films teenage.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian