While it clings too tightly to the now-standard gross-out mentality of teen films, “Get Over It” manages some originality and wit, too, in its story of a boy who gets dumped and the girl he falls for instead.
Berke (Ben Foster) is the average, slightly bookish high-schooler whose girlfriend Allison (Melissa Sagemiller) dumps him suddenly and without provocation. She doesn’t have another beau in mind; she’s just bored and wants to move on.
Berke, however, does not want to move on. When he sees Allison getting cozy with Striker (Shane West), the boy-band singer who has just moved into their school after touring the world with the Swingtown Lads, he becomes desperate to win her back. Since Allison and Striker (the “Backstreet B****,” Berke calls him) are both auditioning for the school’s Shakespeare play, he decides to audition, too.
He doesn’t have a clue about Shakespeare, though, so he gets help from Kelly (Kirsten Dunst), the year-younger sister of his best friend Felix (Colin West). Felix doesn’t like the idea of anyone having the hots for his sister, so he watches the situation carefully — but despite Kelly’s increasing attraction to her brother’s friend, Berke shows no interest in her. He just wants Allison back.
The school play is “A Midsummer Night’s Rockin’ Eve,” which is an awful musical version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” penned by the school’s starry-eyed drama teacher, Dr. Desmond Forrest-Oates (Martin Short; think Corky St. Clair in “Waiting for Guffman”). Explanations of the play’s plot let the layperson understand that its romantic entanglements closely resemble the Allison/Striker/Berke/Kelly situation. Berke, who can’t sing (his audition consists of him butchering the jingle from the Big Red chewing gum commercials), gets a minor role, but since this is a movie that revels in its own predictability, you know it’s only a matter of time before one of the leads drops out and Berke has to take his place.
Director Tommy O’Haver has a highly visual style that leads to several amusing moments. A long tracking shot of a just-dumped Berke walking down the street as townspeople join in a well-choreographed dance number set to Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” suggests a more ambitious attitude than most films of this genre are afforded.
The film’s music should be noted, too. (Yes, one-hit wonder Sisqo has a role as one of Berke’s friends, and sings the film’s closing-credits number with Vitamin C. But we’re not mentioning that, because it’s irrelevant.) The songs in “A Midsummer Night’s Rockin’ Eve,” written by “South Park’s” Marc Shaiman, are quite funny, ranging in style from a “Grease”-like opening number to a boy-band-inspired ode to the play’s beauteous Hermia.
Where the film suffers is in its insistence on being crude. Someone vomits into the punch bowl at a party, which is bad enough, but then someone has to accidentally drink it, too. An over-sexed dog keep turning up as well. A scene at a strip club is the most egregious, though, as it commits the heinous crime of not being funny.
No one’s saying “Get Over It” is any great stroke of genius, and it’s nowhere near as sassy or clever as the best teen films. But for what it is, it’s extremely funny.
B+ (; )
