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ARTICLES - "Charming and disarming "

Charming and disarming by Louis B. Hobson
Calgary Sun, April 9, 1999

Drew Barrymore's romantic comedy Never Been Kissed is her version of Revenge of the Nerds.
Barrymore is Josie Geller, a 25-year-old copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times.

She's a bright, dedicated employee who dreams of being a reporter, but her social skills keep her from climbing the corporate ladder. For Josie, it's just a repeat of her humiliating high-school experience where she was the class geek. Josie finally gets her big chance.

The eccentric publisher (Gary Marshall) decides to send her back to school to do an undercover story. From Day 1, it's a disaster. Once again, Josie is an outcast with the in-crowd. It takes an intervention by her brother Rob (David Arquette) to turn Josie the geek into Josie the prom queen. With her hit movie Ever After, Barrymore reinvented the Cinderella story. With Never Been Kissed, she gives her version of The Ugly Duckling. Few actors of Barrymore's generation would be brave enough to disguise their beauty in order to play an awkward, pudgy teen.

You want Josie to succeed and each time she doesn't, you feel her pain. The flashback scene to her real prom night is truly touching. The cruelty she suffers at the hands of the school jock is akin to Sissy Spacek's humiliation in Carrie.

Preview audiences actually booed Josie's tormentors and cheered when she finally triumphed.
Every swan needs a prince charming and Josie has hers in Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan), her high-school English teacher.
He immediately sees Josie's sensitive side. Much to the dismay of Sam, what starts out as a teacher/mentor situation blossoms into love.
He is unaware of how old Josie really is, so he feels guilty about his feelings and she deeply regrets that she can't encourage him.
What saves this relationship is that Vartan looks youthful enough to be a first-year teacher.
Barrymore has surrounded herself with a strong cast of young stars, including Leelee Sobieski as a high-school outcast, Jeremy Jordan as the popular boy who takes a shine to Josie and Jordan Ladd, Marley Shelton and Jessica Alba as the giddy school snobs.

Back at the Sun-Times, there's even stronger support from Molly Shannon as an oversexed vamp, John C. Reilly as Josie's immediate superior and Marshall as the publisher.

Arquette has fun playing the high-school dropout who has just as important a life lesson to learn as his sister. He does a great impersonation of Tom Cruise from Risky Business.

On the surface, Never Been Kissed is not that much of a departure from She's All That, Carrie 2: The Rage or 10 Things I Hate About You.

But then again, Never Been Kissed warns never to take people at face value. That goes for this movie as well.

It has a great deal to say about believing in oneself but instead of preaching, it does so with a sweetness and sincerity that's as disarming as its heroine.

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