Drive Me Crazy film review

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DRIVE ME CRAZY

Naming a teen romantic comedy after a chart-topping hit by Britney Spears could be viewed as canny marketing or an act of desperation on the part of the film-makers behind Drive Me Crazy.

Either way, fans of the pint-sized pop princess - the film's target audience - are in for a big disappointment. Not only does the Spears track play for all of 15 seconds (excluding the end credits), but this latest spin on Pygmalion is a bland and cutesy piece of Technicolor drivel.

Melissa Joan Hart plays Nicole, a sassy high school lassie who is very much part of the in-crowd and is almost single-handedly organising this year's gala celebration.

Nicole dreams of dating star basketball player Brad (Gabriel Carpenter) and religiously attends every game in the hope of being noticed. As the gala draws near, Nicole is delighted when Brad asks her to be his partner for the evening, but her joy soon turns to despair when he later changes his mind, rejecting her in favour of a buxom cheerleader.

Plunged into the fiery pits known as teenage depression, Nicole turns to her grungy neighbour Chase (Adrian Grenier) who has just been dumped by his girlfriend Dulcie (Ali Larter). Reluctantly, Chase agrees to be Nicole's date as part of a cunning scheme to win back Brad and Dulcie.

The plan: to pretend to be so deliriously in love that their respective romantic prey will be overcome with jealousy and see the error of their ways. Of course, the young couple soon realise what the audience has known all along: that the person they really want is closer than they think.

Key to any rom-com is believable and likeable characters, and sadly Nicole and Chase fall into neither category. She is a stereotypical goody two shoes who has a smart retort for every situation; he's the sensitive and romantic soul hidden beneath a brusque exterior who, given a quick makeover - involving a centre parting and slacks - suddenly becomes flavour of the month.

Hart, looking a great deal younger than her 24 years, hits the cute button from the word go, flashing her pearly whites and mugging when all else fails. Grenier plays his romantic hero before and after the makeover with the same air of disaffected sarcasm. Their sexual chemistry is limited to verbal ping-pong, tossing acidic one-liners back and forth to drag out the inevitable gooey realisation of their true feelings.