Pun Salad

So I was reading this list of the "Top 150 Guy Movies of All Time", putting the ones I hadn't seen into the Blockbuster rental queue. This one finally showed up.

It's about two nice Irish Catholic lads from Southie who, for hazy reasons, get into the game of vigilantism. Willem Dafoe plays a brilliant gay FBI investigator hot on their trail. The dialog is funny, the action is very violent. While it wasn't a critical success (20% on the Tomatometer), its unique premise, offbeat characters, and unusual style worked for me.

The reliable IMDB trivia page counts 33 bodies, and 246 occurrences of the f-word. Frankly, I would have guessed higher than that latter number; in a 110-minute movie, that's only 2.24 occurrences per minute! Seemed like more.

I am probably about 37 years too old, and also the wrong sex, to enjoy this movie. The title isn't meant to be taken literally. John Tucker must not actually die, although that would probably have made the movie a little more interesting.

It's one of those slapdash prefabricated movies. The characterizations are as thin as the paper the scriptwriter used to write them. Four girls: the brain, the cheerleader, the hippie, and the unpopular one. (That's all you need to know.) Each want to humiliate the title character for his romantic duplicity, although it's hardly clear why; in the real world, each would have a long waiting list of alternate suitors. But, given the unlikely premise, everything is predictable. (John Tucker has a nicer and less popular brother; want to hazard a guess as to whether he winds up with the unpopular girl at the end? … hey, you're right!)

Jenny McCarthy appears as the mother of the unpopular girl. Hm. Extra half star for that, and an occasional laugh here and there.

If you haven't seen Mean Girls, though, watch that instead. Same kind of thing done much better.