HAVING spent my teen years serially dismantling the hearts of the cheerleading squad and swatting those pesky pleas to play quarterback for Florida State and Oklahoma, I would, of course, have no idea what it’s like to be a spotty, quivering, female-repelling stick of valedorktorian.
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But “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” the adventures of a class nerd who blurts out the title during his valedictory speech, makes for a lively and refreshing glimpse into how the other half lives. It almost makes me regret all the times I stomped on the tracheas of debate dweebs.
“Sixteen Candles” wasn’t one of the funniest movies of the ’80s, but it was honest and touchingly pure. It lasted. “I Love You, Beth Cooper” isn’t especially hilarious, but it has a warm sense of humor instead of a string of gross-out jokes. It’ll be a cable mainstay.
Beth — she is named after the KISS song — is the head cheerleader played by Hayden Panettiere, practically head cheerleader of the nation by now. She’s startled by the graduation-day announcement by her toucan-nosed classmate Denis Cooverman (Paul Rust, who is 28, but I forgive). She brings two friends to his house for a party that night, anyway, not to flirt but to have a laugh at Denis’ gangly nerdiness.
The three girls are the only ones who show up, though, except for Denis’ Ducky-like sidekick Rich (Jack Carpenter), who keeps denying he’s gay despite his tendency to describe a sneaker as “very Gene Kelly circa 1945, don’t you think?”
Beth is having a fight with her psycho older boyfriend, a rageaholic soldier who patrols the neighborhood in a giant Hummer that blasts “Ride of the Valkyries.” Soon the soldier and his crew are chasing the two guys and three girls deep into the suburban night.
Based on a novel and script by “The Simpsons” writer Larry Doyle, the Chris
Columbus-directed movie doesn’t add a lot of wrinkles to the long-wild-night format of “American Graffiti,” “Dazed and Confused” and “Superbad.” It does have a sheaf of quotable lines and a sometimes-piercing eye. Rich seems to think a brief same-sex kiss “isn’t gay — it’s within the three-second rule,” while a sluttish girl murmurs, “Champagne makes me do . . . things.” A principal notes, “I can’t let you kill him on school property.” Spider-Man underpants, huggy bullies and a beatdown with a skeleton play important roles.
As the brilliant-but-canceled TV series “Freaks and Geeks” showed, getting high school right is as important as getting it funny. That means equal parts annihilating boredom and wistful nostalgia. “So what are you thinking?” says Denis. “Nothing,” replies Beth.
When she demonstrates a cheer, a word need not be spoken to make it clear how poignant — how “Benjamin Button” — the situation is: For Beth, this is as good as it gets. Denis, who is headed for Stanford, has nothing but glory in his future. Only at this moment do their trajectories intersect. If they ever see each other again, she’ll be serving him drinks.
Which is why, in a way, Beth is as frustrated as Denis is. In one erratic episode, she blurts, “Who said it’s supposed to be fun?” It’s a toss-up whether that remark is as sad as this one from Denis: “All my memories of high school are from tonight.”