Review of Love Don't Co$t a Thing (2003) by Aslum K — 07 Dec 2010

Well, I'm glad I didn't have anything to do with this movie.

[u]Love Don't Cost A Thing[/u] is a remake of [u]Can't Buy Me Love[/u] (Steve Rash, 1987) with a predominantly African American cast. In case you're unfamiliar with that fairly well known teenpic, basically nerdy kid pays popular girl to be his girlfriend in hopes of becoming popular himself. Not a hard concept to work, and potentially a lot of fun. Unfortunately, this movie isn't.

After "Dark Angel" was cancelled, I spent some time trying to go into casting, which is how I met one of the few contacts I still have in the business, at my old internship, who cast a lot of "B" movies (which, as you know, is what I now want to do - produce them, not cast them. Anyway...). As a result, they traveled in the same circles as all of the other casting agencies in town, including Reuben Cannon and Associates, who cast this film (and do most "urban" films in general). Because I was intrigued by the concept, I was going to work the angles and try to be a casting assistant on it. Now I'm glad I didn't. (Well, not true. Maybe I would have gotten to meet Christina Milian, but then again, I was in a relationship back then so couldn't have done anything about it).

While everybody tries really hard in this movie, and it does have some stuff I liked (the dad /wanting/ the son to be cooler; the condom to fix the car scene; the cast), there was a sincerity to the original that is seriously missing from this movie. First and foremost, Nick Cannon isn't much of a nerd. Patrick Dempsey was good at playing both roles, and indeed, one of the subtexts of [u]Can't Buy Me Love[/u] is the true-to-life fact that when you grow up in the same place, the kids who later become preps or jocks or whatever they were called at your school really were your friends at one time. Here, however, there is no chemistry at all between anybody, so this could never work. You never feel like the nerds could really be very close to Alvin (Cannon), nor do you feel like he truly cares about them anyway. Worse, you don't feel like Cannon and Milian's character are anything more than friends, which is really sad, because the two dated in real life. And finally, there are so many logistical gaps in the plot (the final scene doesn't make any sense, as a basketball game screetches to a halt as the jocks try to kick the nerds out of their "lucky seats," a clumsy attempt to redo the lunchroom scene from [u]Can't Buy Me Love[/u]) and so many desperate attempts at humor (wide angle lenses to be "wacky"; Steve Harvey doing condom schtick) that you really don't care about any of it. Again, the cast is full of talented people: Cannon, Milian, Kal Penn, Steve Harvey, Vanessa Bel Calloway, Kenan Thompson, and lots of attractive girls, the production design is really good and its heart is in the right place, but the movie tries so hard that it feels forced. None of it has the sweetness of [u]Can't Buy Me Love[/u] at its best, so it ultimately is kind of embarrassing to watch.

And at the end of the day, that makes me feel a little relieved.