As the anti-hero of the movie, the aforementioned John Tucker (played by Jesse Metcalfe, the underage gardener from "Desperate Housewives") is targeted for social annihilation after each of his three girlfriends discovers she's not alone in falling for the basketball star's considerable charms.
And apparently, the worst thing you can do to a BMOC like Tucker is make him behave like a girl. So much for girl power. While kudos are due director Betty Thomas and screenwriter Jeff Lowell for making John Tucker's fictional high school a virtual UN of multiculturalism, they've no reason to be proud of the way they handle gender issues. Maybe the generation that will see and enjoy this movie has reached a point of such advanced post-feminist thinking that sexism is a non-issue, but frankly, I doubt it. It's enormously discouraging, especially given the film's "you go, girl" window dressing, that John Tucker's most "humiliating" episodes are linked to him behaving "like a girl" (i.e. talking about his feelings, obsessing about his thighs, crying for no apparent reason). Oh, the hilarity.
That caveat aside, as teen movies go, "John Tucker Must Die" is reasonably entertaining.
The girls who are out to destroy John Tucker's life are meant to represent a cross-section of high school society--the super-achiever (played by Arielle Kebbel), the head cheerleader (Ashanti) and the free-love hippie chick (Sophia Bush)--but they're all pretty much the same: popular, gorgeous and disdainful of newcomers. That's bad news for Kate (the amiable but perplexed-looking Brittany Snow, late of NBC's "American Dreams") who, like most high school students, is desperate for approval, friendship and a sense of belonging. Unlike most high school students, she actually finds all three.
Sadly, the path to social acceptance never did run smoothly. Initial attempts to discredit, embarrass or otherwise tarnish the iconic Tucker are spectacularly unsuccessful, and finally, Kate steps in to bring Tucker down. This allows the introduction of another high school movie chestnut: that the theoretically "unpopular" or "unattractive" kids are, in fact, perfectly attractive, which is evident to everyone only after they undergo a mind-blowing transformation (removing their glasses and/or plumping their cleavage).
Despite its various shortcomings, "John Tucker" isn't a terrible movie. It just isn't terribly funny or terribly interesting, although I suspect that its intended audience won't mind very much. And in its defense, it's far less predictable and insulting than the vast majority of teen movies released in recent years. And that, at the very least, is a step in the right direction. Review by Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune Additional Reviews AP
