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Drive me Crazy
USA 1999
Reviewed by Mike Higgins
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
US, the present. High-school senior Chase Hammond has just been dumped by his girlfriend. His neighbour Nicole Maris is failing to impress the school's star basketball player. In order to make their quarries jealous, they decide to pretend they are dating one another. The introspective Chase changes his image to suit the pert Nicole, thereby earning the suspicion of his two friends. With Chase at her side, Nicole realises that being one of the school's in-crowd isn't as rewarding as it once was. The pair grow closer.
Chase is unhappy with the contempt his new acquaintances have for his old friends; Nicole is devastated when she spies Chase kissing her best friend . Days before the school prom, the pair split up. At the prom Nicole is reconciled with Chase and her too-often-absent father. Arriving home, the children discover that Chase's father has spent the night with Nicole's mother.
Review
Pity the jobbing director, for whom the high-school feature was once bread-and-butter work to be churned out well away from the glare of publicity. Since Amy Heckerling's smart Jane Austen adaptation Clueless, US high schools - at least those portrayed in a crop of recent movies - have played host to Shakespeare (10 Things I Hate about You), Choderlos de Laclos (Cruel Intentions), entrepreneurial skulduggery (Rushmore), and real-politik allegory (Election). This is not to suggest that all of the new intake have thrived in their new surroundings; but enough have succeeded to raise our expectations of whatever next the genre has to offer. All of which is bad news for John Schultz's instantly forgettable film.
Given that his past credits include the popular teen television serial Dawsons Creek, it is perhaps no surprise that screenwriter Rob Thomas paints an irredeemably bland portrait of contemporary American youth culture. His characterisation of Chase's loose group of geek buddies and the clean-cut preppies to whom Nicole pledges allegiance is dismally formulaic. Tensions between these two camps proceed along the most conventional of narrative routes: boy meets girl, with some soapy to-and-froing merely delaying the saccharine conclusion.
Whereas the more watchable of the recent US high-school comedies play self-consciously to their pop culture-literate audiences, Drive Me Crazy feels like a throwback to a far less sophisticated breed of teen picture. (The title of the novel on which this film is based - How I Created My Perfect Prom Date - neatly evokes the juvenile tone of Drive Me Crazy.) Eschewing the smart intertextuality of such films as Clueless, Drive Me Crazy introduces into its vapid milieu various moments of apparent sociological topicality. At one point Chase's unpopular friend hijacks the school's television station to broadcast a short film satirising the herd instincts and pep-rally culture of his classmates. But while this scene might signal a sympathy on behalf of Schultz for the adolescent outsiders of teen society, Drive Me Crazy ends with a celebration of that bastion of high-school conformity, the prom. As if to underline its socially cohesive function, the prom even boasts the meek attendance of all the school's nerds. Another perfunctory touch - the single-parent status of Chase's father and Nicole's mother - does however provide the film its most memorable moment: Nicole's reconciliation with her often-absent father. Such reunions are, of course, staples of American youth movies; this one, however, must be the first to be staged in a hot-air balloon.
Credits
- Director
- John Schultz
- Producer
- Amy Robinson
- Screenplay
- Rob Thomas
- Based on the novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser
- Director of Photography
- Kees van Oostrum
- Editor
- John Pace
- Production Designer
- Aaron Osborne
- Music
- Greg Kendall
- ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Production Company
- Twentieth Century Fox presents an Amy Robinson production
- Co-producer
- Nancy Paloian-Breznikar
- Production Supervisor
- Linda Warrilow
- Production Co-ordinators
- Audra Cervantes
- LA:
- Gregory Earls
- Unit Production Manager
- Leigh Shanta
- Location Manager
- David B. Smith
- Assistant Directors
- Paul N. Martin
- Jim Goldthwait
- Miriam Epstein
- Script Supervisor
- Suzanne Bingham
- Casting
- Sheila Jaffe
- Georgianne Walken
- Associate:
- Julia Kim
- Utah:
- Take One!
- Cate Praggastis
- Voice:
- Loop De Loop
- Camera Operators
- Michael Lund
- Pat Reddish
- Steadicam Operator
- Geoff Haley
- Music Video Supervisor
- Norwood Cheek
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Rick H. Josephsen
- Graphic Designers
- Adam Tankell
- Jackson Douglas
- Art Director
- Erin Cochran
- Set Designers
- Carl Stensel
- John R. Uibel
- Set Decorator
- Melissa Levander
- Costume Designer
- Genevieve Tyrrell
- Costume Supervisor
- Heidi Higginbotham
- Department Head Make-up Artist
- Kris Evans
- Key Make-up
- Greg T. Moon
- Key Hair
- Julie Woods
- Main Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- End Titles
- Scarlet Letters
- Music Programmer/Drummer
- Jeff Allison
- Featured Musicians
- Jake Guralnick
- David Schlichting
- Mike Leahy
- Bob Kendall
- Ed Silvia
- Meredith Byam
- Music Supervisors
- Tom Wolfe
- Manish Raval
- Music Editor
- Glenn Auchinachie
- Music Recordist
- Matthew Ellard
- Score Mixer
- Malcolm Luker
- Music Consultant
- Greg 'Skeggy' Kendall
- Soundtrack
- "Turbo-Teen" - Sugar High; "Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding" - Less Than Jake; "Cheapskate" - Supergrass; "Bedrock" - B(if)tek; "Real Good Time" - Alda; "Endless Summer Days" - Diesel Boy; "Shabby Girl" - The Electric Farm; "Picture of You" - Charlotte Grace; "Is This Really Happening to Me", "The 'In' Crowd" - Phantom Planet: "Shake It Don't Break It" - Malveaux featuring Tai; "Bitter Words" - Area 7; "Keep on Loving You" - REO Speedwagon; "Get Rid of That Girl", "Outta My Mind", "Keep on Loving You" - The Donnas; "Koolest Band" - Montana; "Next to You" - Natasha Pearce; "Run Baby Run" - Deadstar; "Look at You Now" - Far Too Jones; "It's All Been Done" - Barenaked Ladies; "(You Drive Me) Crazy" (The Stop Remix!) - Britney Spears; "Regret" - Mukala; "Sugar" (contains elements of "I Want You Back") - Don Philip ; "I Want It ThatWay" (The Jack D. Elliot remix) - Backstreet Boys; "Stranded" - Plumb; "Let's Live It Up" - Brian Setzer Orchestra; "One for Sorrow (The Tony Moran remix) - Steps; "Duo" (from the film "The Trouble with Harry") - Joel McNeely and The Royal Scottish National Orchestra; "Wig Wam Bam" - Sweet; "Your Big Day"
- Sound Mixer
- Jonathan Earl Stein
- Re-recording Mixers
- Ken Teaney
- Marshall Garlington
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Andrew DeCristofaro
- Dialogue Editors
- Paul Curtis
- John C. Stuver
- Supervising Sound Effects Editor
- Ann Scibelli
- Sound Effects Editors
- Jeffrey Whitcher
- Chris Smith
- Michael Kamper
- Jeff K. Brunello
- Rebecca Hanck
- ADR Editors
- Paul Curtis
- John C. Stuver
- Foley
- Artists:
- Sean Rowe
- Greg Barbanell
- Joan Rowe
- Recordist:
- Chris Staszak
- Mixers:
- Eric Thompson
- Shawn Kennelly
- Editors:
- John Chandler
- Daniel Scolnik
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Bill McIntosh
- Cast
- Melissa Joan Hart
- Nicole Maris
- Adrian Grenier
- Chase Hammond
- Stephen Collins
- Mr Maris
- Susan May Pratt
- Alicia
- Mark Webber
- Dave
- Kris Park
- Ray Neeley
- Gabriel Carpenter
- Brad
- Ali Larter
- Dulcie
- Lourdes Benedicto
- Chloe Frost
- Keri Lynn Pratt
- Dee Vine
- Natasha Pearce
- Sue
- Jordan Bridges
- Eddie Lampell
- Keram Malicki-Sanchez
- Rupert
- Mark Metcalf
- Mr Rope
- William Converse-Roberts
- Mr Hammond
- Faye Grant
- Mrs Maris
- Derrick Shore
- Tom
- Andrew Roach
- Big Fred
- Joey Lopez
- student TV director
- Jessica Frandsen
- Drena
- Kristy Wu
- Liz
- Joshua
- Jacque Gray
- Kathy
- Ivey Lloyd
- pretty girl
- Terry Cain
- diner waitress
- Lauren Renée Boyer
- Elizabeth Hart
- vixens
- Doug MacMillan
- Mr Webb
- Mary A. Daniels
- faculty sponsor
- Holly Swain
- Nordic blonde
- Maya Ford
- Electrocutes bass
- Torrance Castellano
- Electrocutes drums
- Allison Robertson
- Electrocutes guitar
- Brett Anderson
- Electrocutes vox
- Marc Valasquez
- Pit Band lead singer
- Brendon Te
- Pit Band guitar
- Tone Te
- Pit Band drums
- Darby Bailey
- Pit Band bass
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 8,191 feet
- 91 minutes 1 second
- DolbyDigital
- Colour/Prints by
- DeLuxe