Tucker's Luck
When three high school girls discover that they have all been dating the same guy, school hunk John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe), they decide to get their revenge and teach him a lesson. With the help of shy retiring Kate (Brittany Snow - Hairspray) they aim to get John to fall in love with her only for her then to break his heart. Except Kate starts to have feelings for someone else as she plays John along.
"John Tucker Must Die" is quite frankly nothing more than an average mergence of stock high school storylines from the ugly duckling who begins to turn heads, the popular girls who turn her into a perfect teenager and the school hunk whose shallow womanizing causes the girls to seek revenge. All of which is then tied up with an utterly crass climax that attempts to deliver some sort of meaningful moralistic message but ends up being overly twee and sickening. What does this all mean, well there are absolutely no surprises when it comes to "John Tucker Must Die" with everything being completely text book and devoid of originality. Even the attempts to deliver a couple of twists are as expected as is the final outcome.
Although having said this there is in the midst of all this formulaic fluff a couple of scenes which manage to raise a few decent laughs. The scene where John Tucker turns into an overly sensitive wreck due to his protein shake being laced with a woman's hormone supplement is quite well played as is the turning point in the relationship with the romantic boat trip. But these moments are to be frank few and far between as obvious mediocrity takes over which tries to generate laughs through cliche characters and even more cliche twists.
What does grate when it comes to "John Tucker Must Die" and it is something which always seems to be happening with Hollywood high school movies, we get a cast who are far to old to be convincing as teenagers. Jesse Metcalfe, Ashanti and Sophia Bush were all into their 20's when this was made but still we are expected to believe that they are your stereotypical high school kids. Believability is another issue over Kate played by Brittany Snow because quite frankly she is not an ugly duckling and as such it's impossible to believe that she doesn't have plenty of men wanting to date her let alone that she is slightly inept at the whole dating malarkey.
As for the performances, well no one stands out from a cast which also features Arielle Kebbel, Penn Badgley and Jenny McCarthy. Everyone basically does the bare minimum almost workman like in their performance as they deal with their 2 dimensional characters.
What this all boils down to is that "John Tucker Must Die" is as forgettable as many teen high school movies. The mergence of several story elements only prompts you to make instant comparisons to other movies. Plus the performances from a bunch of actors far too old to be making high school movies just causes believability issues. It is what it is, that is not a terrible movie but one which is so unoriginal and average that those few moments which work are far too easily forgotten.
