A surprisingly sweet teen comedy that keeps the sex under the covers and off-screen.
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"Can't Hardly Wait" for what? you might ask.
Well, that would be sex, if you haven't seen this 1998 teen comedy. Or for the fringe characters in this Harry Elfont/Deborah Kaplan screenplay, popularity and acceptance. For the geeks who've been picked on for four long years, it would be a "Revenge of the Nerds" payback on the jocks who persecuted them. And for the male lead, it would be the chance to remove the adjective from "unrequited" love and finally tell the most popular girl in school what she means to him.
It's the last storyline and a "Breakfast Club" opposites-attract subplot that make this one surprisingly sweeter than most teen comedies--something amply reinforced by a keep-it-clean script that leaves the lowbrow humor and raunchiness off the pages. Though "Can't Hardly Wait" is rated PG-13 for teen drinking, sexuality, and language, it's probably one of the more wholesome teen films I've seen. Maybe that's because the quest for an impossible dream girl drives it rather than testosterone. Or maybe it's because the quality of writing is a notch or two above the belt, rather than below it. After all, the co-writers had previously collaborated on "A Very Brady Sequel" (1996), and it doesn't get any squeakier clean than that. Like John Hughes, Elfont and Kaplan seem to have a good read on teen-talk, teen angst, and the teen mindset, and that puts a little more meat on all the characters' bones.
In retrospect, as it turned out with a simple it-happened-one-night teen film like "American Graffiti" (1973), "Can't Hardly Wait" also produced it's share of stars . . . or at least highly successful actors. At the top of the list is Jennifer Love Hewitt ("Ghost Whisperer"), who plays Amanda, a popular girl recently dumped by Huntington Hills High School's biggest jock (and biggest jerk), Mike--played by Peter Facinelli, whom viewers will recognize from his recent role in "Damages." "Six Feet Under" fans will enjoy seeing a very young-looking Lauren Ambrose as a girl so deliberately removed from the high school social scene that some of the teens aren't even sure she goes to their school. And while we're talking "Six Feet Under," that whiz of an embalmer, Federico (Freddy Rodriguez) turns up here as one of Mike's sidekick toadies. If you're a "Scrubs" fan, you'll enjoy seeing Donald Faison in an early role, while fans of "My Name is Earl" will see a glimpse of Joy in Jaime Pressly's performance as one of the jock's girlfriends. But the kick-ass, laugh-out-loud performance by a nobody destined to become a somebody comes from Seth Green (Scott Evil on "Austin Powers"), whose hilarious white-wannabe-black routine predates Vince Vaughn's on "Be Cool" by seven years. With his backpack "pleasure kit" he scopes out the party with the single goal of finding several "hos" to sleep with. And though a bickering band also delivers some funny scenes, the ho-search storyline provides most of the laughs.
Though this is an ensemble film and the camera keeps shifting from clique to clique, the main focus is on Preston Meyers (Ethan Embry), who will board a train for a writing workshop with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. the day after a gigantic party thrown by a rich girl in town (Michelle Brockhurst) whose parents are away. Somehow these kids got a keg of beer, and they show their gratitude for the year's best (and last) party by trashing the house--even drawing mustaches and graffiti on the family portrait that hangs over the fireplace. Molly's reaction to each new discovery is one of the running gags that generates the cruder laughs. Another running gag is a frequent cutaway to two nerdy friends of William Lichter (Charlie Korsmo), the mastermind geek whose plan involves him infiltrating the party to lure Mike and one friend outside to the shed, so his buddies on the roof can jump them, knock them out, strip them, and photograph them in a lover's embrace. But this and just about every other plan from all of the characters somehow goes awry, and some of the funniest moments come from the two nerds trying to pass time while their friend loses himself in drunken reverie. "Know what? My retainer kind of looks like a Klingon warship!" one says, holding it up to the starlit sky.
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[release]24423[/release]