Producer #1: Hey, kid, we think you've got just the talent to give us another one of those movies like--whaddyacallit--American Graffiti.

Producer #2: Yeah, one of those movies you can count on, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Writer: You mean one of those movies with a bunch of thirty-year-olds running around a high school campus pretending they're the same age as the rest of the kids?

Producer #1: Yeah, exactly! And make it all about fitting in and finding romance and being vulnerable but ultimately . . .

Writer: Triumphing at the homecoming game or the prom?

Producer #2: Exactly! This boy catches on quick. Only this time it's definitely the prom. We already bought the story. We just need you to adapt it to the screen. Adapt it so that it's . . . it's . . .

Writer: So that it's essentially the same as all the other movies about high school, only a little bit different too?

Producers #1 & #2: Exactly!

Never Been Kissed is the occasionally clever story of a young woman named Josie Geller (Drew Barrymore), whose chance to move from being a copy editor to a reporter at the Chicago Tribune comes when the head of the paper (played rather humorously by Garry Marshall) sends her to do an undercover story on what high schools are like today. Josie (who was nicknamed 'Josie Grossie' when she went through high school the first time) sees her undercover assignment less as an opportunity to find a story than as a chance to live out all sorts of shallow and childish fantasies.

The only thing that makes this story the least bit bearable is the fact that the script goes out of its way to make fun of itself and its protagonist. It's refreshing to see a script that attempts to account for the ridiculous fact that the too-old Barrymore and her brother Rob (David Arquette) suddenly find themselves plunged into the high school milieu once again.

Even more ridiculous is the idea that a woman who claims that she dreams of becoming a reporter could be so much less interested in reporting on the environment in which she finds herself than in fitting in with the popular crowd. Even before her editor demands that she befriend the cool kids, she demonstrates an other-worldly kind of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and anxiety about belonging. It's enough to make the audience raise a pretty obvious objection: "Look lady, even if you really were that obsessed about being the most popular girl in school back when you were in high school, right now you've got an opportunity to move into a career that we're supposed to believe you would find satisfying. Get your head out of your ass and concentrate on finding your story."

Obviously, however, this kind of film is targeted at the very demographic that is most likely to sympathize with a protagonist who strives for acceptance and popularity. High schoolers aren't supposed to be interested in moving from the stuffy office of a copy editor to the adventuresome beat of an undercover reporter. They're supposed to be interested in popularity. And so the film makes a little bit of fun of itself by having Geller's editor order her to worm her way into the popular crowd, since the cool kids are the ones throwing parties that are making headlines in other newspapers.

The editor-in-chief at the Tribune is a little incomprehensible. He is cavalier about firing reporters, but gives Geller an eternity to find her high school story. This is another instance of the film making fun of itself, as the editorial deadline magically corresponds with the prom and the high school baseball team's appearance in a championship game. After being chosen as prom queen (surprise!), Geller reveals her identity. Her editor is justifiably angry at her, as a rival paper is able to scoop the Tribune on a story about one of their undercover reporters having blown her own cover.

Instead of assuming that she's been fired (as she should), she decides that the thing to do is to write an article that is then read to us in the same weepy voice that Geller always uses when she's trying to be articulate. The article is roughly nine lines of mawkish nonsense, but apparently it captivates the entire city of Chicago. The success of the piece seems to have something to do with Josie Geller's uncanny (and extremely obnoxious) ability to move herself to tears with her own prose.

Thus far, however, I've left out the most important thing: the way in which the various characters in the film play at pedophilia. Josie herself appears to be charmed by a seventeen-year-old boy whose name (wait for it) is Guy. Her attraction to him (despite certain statutory obstacles) is clearly tied to her desire to prove that she is a desirable woman in the eyes of a prom king. This infatuation of hers is far less important than the crush that she develops on her English teacher. We've all heard Sting's side of how teacher-student romance develops in "Don't Stand So Close To Me," but something tells me that Michael Vartan's portrayal of teacher Sam Coulson gives us a rather clearer depiction of the slimy way in which a teacher can pursue a student romantically.

Not that Geller doesn't encourage him. But the difference between the encouragement of a grown woman who is only pretending to be a high school student and a young girl who is flattered by the attention of a charming older man--well, I'm not sure that the difference would be at all visible from the teacher's perspective. It's fine for English teachers to behave the way Coulson does in "schoolgirl fantasies" and for schoolgirls to behave the way Geller does in English teacher fantasies, but to say that their romance is "okay in the end because they're both of age" is to miss the point about the kind of romance that they were playing at before that truth was revealed.

I certainly don't mean to suggest that I can fault that Coulson character for his fascination with Geller. Drew Barrymore--whose eyes sparkle with just enough intelligence to make you wish for more, and whose graceful carriage is prototypically feminine--is one of the more enticing women I have seen. But she's enticing enough without having to get all Jon-Benet Ramsay on us.

If the script hadn't done such a thorough job of mocking itself, then I would have written this off as just another worthless romantic comedy. But there are certain touches throughout the film that show us how it is struggling simultaneously to be every other high school movie and to be slightly different from every other high school movie. When 'The Millennium' is announced as the theme of the prom, the kids in the high school cheer in the background as one student explains to Geller that it's very important for their theme to be different than the themes of all the other high schools. The fact that the entire school is actually surprised when it is announced that another school has also chosen 'The Millennium' as a prom theme is worth a pretty good chuckle. It's also nice to see the way that other hackneyed prom theme choices are proposed and rejected before Josie proposes the equally tired 'Famous Couples Throughout History.' In fact, I would say that the real story here is less about high school romance than the tactics that Hollywood hacks use to try to hold onto their souls while churning out precisely the kind of hackwork that pays the bills. That's a story that I always find vaguely compelling.



Recommended: Yes