FISHED FROM THE PROM FLICK RECYLING BIN
A scene from 'Drive Me Crazy'
Courtesy Photo
"DRIVE ME CRAZY"
*1/2 stars 90 minutes | Rated: PG-13
Opened: Friday, October 1, 1999
Directed by John Schultz

Starring Melissa Joan Hart, Adrian Grenier, Mark Metcalf, Faye Grant, William Converse-Roberts, Susan May Pratt & Mark Webber



 COUCH CRITIQUE
   SMALL SCREEN SHRINKAGE: 10%
   LETTERBOX: NOT NECESSARY

Pointless, uninspired, relentlessly clichéd teen romance drivel. For Melissa Joan Hart die-hards only.

   VIDEO RELEASE: 3/14/2000



 REVIEW CROSS-REFERENCE
Melissa Joan Hart:
"Can't Hardly Wait" (1998)

Hart's TV-sized personality can't carry been-there, done-that 'Drive Me Crazy'

By Rob Blackwelder

With a script recycled from the scraps of scores of other prom climax movies, "Drive Me Crazy" might just be the most generic high school flick ever.

Melissa Joan Hart, whose pert but plain, TV-sized personality (she's "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch") can't carry a feature film, stars as Nicole, the super-organized Miss Congeniality of her school's in crowd, who finds herself dateless for the biggest dance in school history when her nondescript, jocko beau throws her over for a cheerleader he landed on top of when run out of bounds during a basketball game.

Meanwhile, Nicole's sullen, rebellious next door neighbor, Chase (Adrian Grenier, "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole"), has been dumped by his freaky chick (as demonstrated by her two-tone hair -- oooo!) girlfriend because he won't join her in her latest protest movement against medical testing on lab rats.

Nicole and Chase were best friends when they were little, but moved into separate social circles in their teens. Can they work together to win back their exes, making them jealous by pretending to be a couple? Only after a preppie make-over montage at the Gap, in which Chase trades in his jeans, T-shirts and personality for a haircut and a khakis-and-button-down-collars uniform so he'll look good on Nicole's arm.

You can do the math from here: Chase's intelligent (because in one scene they discuss world politics!) but unpopular friends call him a sell-out, Nicole's back-stabbing fashion plate girlfriends come on to Chase behind her back, the exes make their apology plays, but what do you know! Our unlikely couple have fallen in love, and realize it just in time for a slow dance at the prom.

Been there. Done that. Yeish!

"Drive Me Crazy" tosses into its teen movie stew a couple random and irrelevant subplots about, for instance, Nicole's absentee father. But with the half-price personalities of the two leads it's hard to see these scenes as anything but filler because we have no energy invested in them.

If you've seen "She's All That," "Can't Hardly Wait," "Pretty In Pink," or any variation thereof, you've already seen most of "Drive Me Crazy." If you haven't seen any of them, consider yourself lucky and stay away from this one, too.






 



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