Released: June 17th, 2008
Starring: Samaire Armstrong, Kevin Zegers, Sharon Osbourne
Writer/Director: Geoff Deane/Nick Hurran
[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]
***
Oh, body-switching movies. How thee are so hit-or-miss. For such a one trick concept, you sure have inspired a lot of iterations. Whether it's mothers turning into daughters, or sworn enemies switching bodies, you sure know how to tell the same exact story. Your quality depends of the freshness of the writing. All it takes is a change of scenery or change in age difference.
"It's a Boy Girl Thing" is about as close to the template as possible. Smart, nice girl Nell (really?) hates her next door neighbor, Woody (again, really?), so much because he's a popular jock. Woody (Zegers) begins the movie by blasting Mystikal's "classic", "Shake Yo Ass" to 11. This annoys Nell (Armstrong) to no end, so she tell him to turn it, but he refuses too unless she flashes him. After her denial and his unusual confession that he's a creep (he's seen them before), Nell's shirt gets caught in the window and rips off, exposing her breasts. From this point forward, "hilarity" ensues.
The main issue I have with this movie is that the first half of the movie after the switch of bodies feels like it was written from a checklist. Boy cries, check. Smart girl uses slang, check. Boy starts dressing like a "nerd", check. Girl dresses like a slut, check. And so on and so forth.
I honestly, wrote down each event I thought was going to take place and they hit on 90% of them. The notable exception being that they accidentally used the wrong bathrooms. Note to writers, you do not need to hit prerequisites in order to make your audience appreciate it. This movie would have been better served getting to the emotional second half faster than trying to show the slapstick side of it. It's a romantic comedy, that's too much comedy.
When the movie turned emotional, Armstrong shined. The O.C. alum, and personal under the radar favorite of mine, showed every little bit of internal turmoil that a boy in a girl's body would go through. Her performance was much more natural than Zegers'. To his credit he did put in a valiant effort, but looked as though he didn't want to fully commit to the feminine side his character needed to show. His crying scenes were tough to watch.
The story itself was generic, which is probably what makes it watchable. It feels comfortable and you relax because you know where it is going, but you really don't have an urge to watch it again. The writing appeared to rip off many of it's predecessors in the teen rom-com genre. The next door neighbors falling in love and the prom scene at the end reminded me of "Drive Me Crazy", and the way it falls apart right near the end is reminiscent of John Hughes 80s movies and their re-skinned versions in the late-90s.
It is definitely a safe film that probably would need to be an R-rated comedy to get any traction in the States, and that's the whole problem with the movies; it doesn't draw attention. The aforementioned Hughes movies were notable because they were a completely different way to show high school characters, while "It's a Boy Girl Thing" blended into the background without a single quality to separate it from the rest. Since this film was made in 2006, I hope it was the last in a long line of boring copy cats, and future teen films follow the lead of the brilliant "Easy A" and make the genre smart again. Just like Hughes in 80s.
Rating: 6/10 -- Mediocre is probably the best way to describe it. It's a 6 because there's nothing inherently wrong with the film. It's well made, well acted, and well written, but we've seen this movie a dozen times before over the last two decades. Also, Armstrong looks gorgeous with short brown hair.
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