_I Love You, Beth Cooper_ is honestly pretty atypical for your American Teen Rom-Com, but the things I hated about it are still the things that I hate about American Teen Rom-Coms at large.

_Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product._

A fun sex comedy that has survived better than most others. Denis is a brain who tells the entire school that he loves Beth Cooper, his dream girl whom he has never spoken to. Beth and her hot-girl friends decide to follow up on this and this starts a crazy graduation night that involves parties, nudity, bullies and beer aka all the requisite ingredients for a teen sex comedy.

With Beth dragging Denis along to all the stops driving like a maniac she has the perfect mixture to be a manic pixie dream girl. I wouldn't fight over anyone who thinks she is just another MPDG but I think she subverts in a lot of ways. Maybe not enough but the whole point of this movie is that Beth isn't a dream girl she's a real person. She drives like a maniac, she makes bad decisions but she feels trapped in her role as the hot girl everyone wants, she's got personal family life issues that affect her outlook.

The opening of the movie is about Denis coming out of his shell but the rest of the movie is about him learning that Beth Cooper is more than the girl on his ceiling poster.

There's a sideplot that I hate one that showed up in 1997's **In and Out** that I absolutely despise. It was nearly subverted here, but the plot point is if [spoiler]someone calls you gay it's because you're gay[/spoiler]. No matter how you act or what you say or how you feel or what your life has been. If someone [spoiler]calls you gay in act one by the end of the movie you will be gay. Rich, aside from the "Let's swordfight with our boners" flashback isn't really that gay. People look at everything he says as if it's really gay but most of it wouldn't be looked at twice if not for the speech and the non-digetic history. It would have been a better movie imo if Denis had been wrong[/spoiler] on all of his speech subjects. The speech would have needed to be a little bit different. But it would have given the movie a stronger point rather than just fleshing out Beth it would have shown that Denis was the one with blinders on. But hey maybe next time.

Decent watch, could watch again, but can't confidently recommend.

While they're very different movies, I tend to get this mixed up with "She's Out of My League". They're both decent movies, they're funny enough, but they're both forgettable and I don't think you're missing out if you skip either.

My biggest problem with this movie is that there is a wildly violent crime spree throughout the movie. I'm not talking about simple trespassing, or even under-age drinking (though, I think it applies to my point) there is physical assault, jokes about "date-rapey" behavior, use of cocaine, threats to life, severe destruction of property, forced entry, and I think illegal tracking, quite a bit is just done openly in front of adults / authority figures, and at one point in uniform. It's one thing to be a little lenient and let kids be kids, but graduating high schoolers are probably 18, adults, and it doesn't make sense to not arrest this idiot. On top of that, to create a character like that in the moment, then he must have a long history of crimes.

I'm actually a fan of the story, cringey as it may be. I love an underdog story, and this is a powerful "coming of age" story for at least 3 different characters, but as the premise is that it is an unbelievable situation, and they casted and that caste delivered just a little too well. They specifically don't play well off of each other because the performances are actually so good as characters, and the characters barely mesh, even as the movie continues.

The movie also undercuts the protagonist at the oddest times. While we're supposed to relate to one of the boys (or possibly Beth Cooper) there are several points where it makes them look even more pathetic or jerks (in her case) and it really takes me out of the movie. I think it is better to have irredeemable characters than characters that vary on their relate-ability like this movie does.

I think you could have a fun little watch with this, but there are so many other things I would suggest: "Superbad", "Can't Hardly Wait", "She's All That", "Booksmart", "Eurotrip" for a start.