bix171
02-13-2004, 11:46 PM
A very, very low-key comedy that tries to convince its target audience—new teens—on the virtues of chastity and while that audience will most likely get the point, they won’t be particularly persuaded by it. It’s a good opportunity wasted, probably because the filmmakers involved—Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) is the director and Victor Levin is the writer—don’t seem that interested, or perhaps don’t believe, in the values the film ostensibly puts forth. Kate Bosworth stars as a wholesome West Virginia grocery store clerk who wins a date with Hollywood superstar Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel), the contest being an effort to clean up his bad-boy reputation; in reality, he develops designs on his unsuspecting date but the twist is that her virtuousness forces him to rethink his caddish ways and he woos her while her pining friend watches helplessly. (The pining friend is played by Topher Grace, from television’s “That 70s Show” which is, judging by this performance, where his future lies.) The characters are essentially mouthpieces for what appears to be Hollywood’s sudden moral awareness but they’re so under-developed that you have to wonder about the film’s sincerity. Hamilton’s confusion about his newfound principles is nebulous: you don’t get the feeling that he’s sincere in his attraction or that, by the end, he’ll actually put his resolutions in place; and Bosworth is so impossibly beautiful that she seems more of a film studio creation than an actress, which makes her virtuous Rosalee seem too good to be true—she’s not quite convincing as a virgin. Nathan Lane and Sean Hayes appear from time to time as Hamilton’s sleazy manager and agent; they symbolize decadent Hollywood but there’s very little for them to do and what there is isn’t very funny. All in all, a glaring example of Hollywood wanting its cake and eating it too.