I Love You, Beth Cooper (PG-13)
IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; iTunes; Max; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube
This is one of those movies that I watched on DVD, thought was okay, but just didn't feel any motivation to bother writing a review. Then some time later, I vaguely regretted that. I probably would have rated it higher than "meh" when I watched it. And now I don't remember it clearly, but unlike most of the movies in this section, I actually feel a slight desire to rewatch it someday, write a better review, and move it out of the "meh" section.
So... the main reason I wanted to see this is Hayden Panettiere, who plays the title character. Looking back, I didn't remember knowing anyone else who was in it, but I see now that Lauren Storm (whom I kinda knew from Flight 29 Down) was in it, and also Alan Ruck and Cynthia Stevenson were in it. Ruck and Stevenson had rather small roles, though, as the parents of the main character, Denis Cooverman. Denis is his high school class valedictorian, and gives a rather unusual speech at graduation, including announcing his love for a classmate named Beth Cooper (who, if I recall, barely knew who he was). It's kinda stalkery, but mostly just painful to watch. But you gotta give him credit for taking a huge risk. I guess.
Anyway... Denis has an ambiguously gay best friend named Rich. And um... they throw a graduation party, I guess, and invite Beth to come. Of course, there's a much bigger party for all the popular kids, but Beth does show up, along with a couple of her girlfriends. And... lots of crazy stuff happens, partly because Beth has a jealous older boyfriend, who's in the Army. He and some of his buddies make a lot of trouble for Denis and everyone. But there are plenty of other sources of trouble and/or weirdness, such as the fact that Beth really isn't exactly the kind of person Denis thought she was. Um... there's not much else I can say. It was all just weird, occasionally somewhat amusing, sometimes kinda interesting, in a more serious, coming-of-age kinda way, or whatever. There were definitely things I liked about the movie, even if I don't really remember any of them now. I kind of feel like it was mostly just redonkulous and absurd, with occasional dashes of greater emotional realism than most teen movies have. But most of the time I just thought it was... meh. I dunno.