Never Been Kissed - ep 87

What were they thinking with this movie?!

Drew Barrymore stars as a meek-but-successful copywriter at the Chicago Sun-Times, and while she’s completely insufferable, at least she’s not “Jossie Grossie” anymore. In the most realistic movie set-up ever, the paper commits to sending her undercover as a “teenager” for several months at a local high school in search of a juicy story. Yeah, no. This is a terrible idea for so many reasons, chiefly the part where the adult teacher (“Alias” afterthought Michael Vartan) falls for the “underage girl.” That’s bad enough, but what about the part where the newspaper actively tries to incite criminal activity?

Old Millennials Remember Movies co-hosts Tyler and Angela remember “Never Been Kissed” as a perfectly fine romantic comedy back in 1999. Maybe it’s because they were in high school at the time and it didn’t seem so crazy (we were dumb dumb teenagers, apparently).

We discuss an especially weepy Drew Barrymore performance, the unintentional (and unsettling) acting choices of NOT-Sydney Bristow (“Alias” is a SHOW about a spy), the saving grace of John C. Reilly, the sloppy, cliche voiceover that’s supposed to pass as a major newspaper’s culture-shaking cover story, and the always-distracting random appearances of a little James Franco.

Tyler also compares his lowly journalism career to the fast-paced life at the movie’s “Chicago Sun-Times,” an organization that surely regrets allowing this movie to use their name. Oh, and we run down all the people in the movie who would need to be fired/charged with crimes at the end of this nonsense.

Needless to say, we’re not “crunching” on “Never Been Kissed.”

Also discussed in this episode:

I Used to Go Here (2020)
The Devil All the Time (2020)
Gleaming the Cube (1989)
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020 TV series)
Julie and the Phantoms (2020 TV series)

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