Not Another Teen Movie * (2001, Chyler Leigh, Jaime Pressly, Chris Evans, Eric Christian Olsen, Mia Kirshner) – Classic Movie Review 1965

A popular US high school jock is challenged by his friends to turn the school’s ugliest pupil into prom-queen material. Oh, no, not another teen movie send up!

At the John Hughes High School, hunky Jake Wyler (Chris Evans) takes a bet from cocky blond Austin (Eric Christian Olsen) that he can transform Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh) into the prom queen before the prom. But Jake’s evil sister Catherine (Mia Kirshner) and bitchy cheerleader Priscilla (Jaime Pressly) are trying to stop him.

Director Joel Gallen’s trashy 2001 spoof of She’s All That, American Pie, Clueless, Road Trip, Ten Things I Hate About You, Can’t Hardly Wait and the rest (plus John Hughes’s Eighties Brat Pack favourites) just cannot get started. Not Another Teen Movie is so like the originals, you hardly realise that it is meant to be funny at all, which makes it ironic that the production company is Original Films. It is so much worse than Scary Movie (2000).

On screen there are strong crude sexual content and sexual humour, strong language, topless female nudity, topless male nudity, nudity in public, an incestuous kiss and some drug content, but the only true crime of this limp send-up of teen movies is to try to make you laugh and fail.

Chyler Leigh as Janey Briggs, a pre-Captain America Chris Evans as Jake Wyler, Jaime Pressly, Mia Kirshner and Eric Christian Olsen star very gamely and do manage to raise a few smiles. But the guest shot of Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club’s Molly Ringwald as the flight attendant is particularly sad.

Deon Richmond, Eric Jungmann, Ron Lester, Cody McMains, Sam Huntington, Joanna Garcia, Lacey Chabert, Samm Levine, Cerina Vincent, Beverly Polcyn, Ed Lauter, Paul Gleason, Mr T, Randy Quaid, George Wyner, Melissa Joan Hart, Sean Patrick Thomas and Michael Ensign are also in the cast.

It runs 89 minutes but there is also an unrated director’s cut at 99 minutes.

Ron Lester, who plays Spatch in Good Burger (1997), Billy Bob in Varsity Blues (1999) and Reggie Ray in Not Another Teen Movie (2001), died on June 17 2016, age 45, after a lifetime battle with obesity.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1965

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