John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe) is a guy who can't be trusted by women and when three of his ex-girlfriends, all from different high school cliques, team up for revenge, they do so with the help of the new girl in town, setting her up with Tucker, with the plan to ruin his reputation and break his heart.
John Tucker Must Die offers plenty of eye candy and a good premise yet the final product is pretty forgettable and standard. I'm actually a little surprised that the film didn't turn out to be better since the trailer was entertaining and the premise offered something a little different. I guess I was expecting something as good as Mean Girls and it was really just direct to DVD material. The script was weak and it used so many clichés. Jeff Lowell should stick with sitcoms since he can't come up with enough interesting material to cover a 90 minute running time.
Director Betty Thomas was equally useless and she just used a generic direction. She didn't capture the teen spirit at all and she was just the wrong person for the job. The dialog was predictable and some of it was really corny. Some of the scenes just tried way too hard to be funny. However, the worst part about it was that the majority of the movie was just dull. Sure it looked nice but it only held a little entertainment value.
The acting was, like the film, standard and forgettable. Jesse Metcalfe was average, neither bad nor great. He should stick to supporting roles since he doesn't have the screen presence to carry a film. Arielle Kebbel may not be a fantastic actress but she does have an engaging quality about her and she had a few good lines. Ashanti was so annoying and over the top. She gave the worst performance out of everyone. Jenny McCarthy was just disturbing to look at and her performance was awful. Brittany Snow was cute although she was also enormously bland. Her character was supposed to be bland at the beginning of the movie but even after she went through a change, she was still pretty un-notable. Sophia Bush was pretty good and she had many funny lines. The one good thing about the cast was that they appeared to be having fun and this helped out a little. Overall, John Tucker Must Die is familiar material and it's not really worth checking out. Rating 5/10
