Friday 27 July 2018

Retro Review: Drive Me Crazy (1999)

Drive Me Crazy
1999
Cast: Melissa Joan Hart, Adrian Grenier, Steven Collins, Susan May Pratt
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Worldwide Box Office Gross: over $22 million

Plot: When a boy and girl both find themselves dateless, they reluctantly join forces to navigate the land mines of high school love. Unexpectedly, they find that the one they always wanted was closer than they realised






'Bored Me Crazy More Like'


Drive Me Crazy is a romantic comedy-drama that one wishes would drive them crazy.... but sadly, it is not for the right reasons. It drove me crazy, somewhat.... crazy that the story is done to and bored me to death. This is another one of those romantic comedies, dramas that offer very much little and that it is just a typical teen movie entity.

Two high school seniors, & one-time inseparable friends who think they have nothing in common, Nicole and Chase are having problems: Nicole is searching for a date for prom night and in order to make the school sports star jealous, she pretends to fall for the so-called rebel, Chase and as she makes him look more presentable, she ends up falling in love with him.

Given that the Britney Spears song titled 'You Drive Me Crazy' came out during this year and did better in the charts when this film was rarely heard of, and yet bombed says it all really. I never saw this back in the late '90s, and teen movies aren't really my bag in general but watching it today, it just doesn't have a great deal going for it. That, and I found it bland in equal measures and it merely existed just to promote the hit single.

It has no wit and for a romantic comedy, it approaches the story far too seriously and so densely, just nothing about it stood out or leapt in front of me. The relationship aspect involving then 23-yr-old Melissa Joan Hart (then- star of Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina The Teenage Witch) and Entourage's Adrian Grenier's characters doesn't make a lot of sense. Nor is casting these actors, who were in their 20s at the time, as teens. 

This was Joan Hart's first and only major movie credit, and since then she hasn't blown up in a big way as a Hollywood actress. Not one single character throughout the entirety of this film establishes any sort of personality or charisma to give it something to work with. It's just your generic rom-com, but with even far fewer qualities.

It's almost akin to She's All That, minus the ugly duckling theme - only that a) Joan Hart and Grenier's onscreen chemistry doesn't come through in the way Rachel Leigh Cook and Freddie Prinze Jr's did and b) this film has none of its charm.

I liked some of the music like REO Speedwagon's Keep on Lovin' You and Britney Spears's title song much more than most of this film, whereby the plot lacks ambition and doesn't really have much to offer.





Final Verdict:

As mentioned, it's funny how Drive Me Crazy is the complete opposite of the song itself; the song was upbeat, energetic, fun, but the movie itself is tepid, below mediocre and forgettable.


Just not good, at all.


Overall:



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