Cast: Nick Cannon, Christina Milian, Steve Harvey, Al Thompson, Kal Penn, Kenan Thompson, Vanessa Bell Calloway
Director: Troy Beyer
Producers: Mark Burg, Reuben Cannon, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove
Screenplay: Troy Beyer and Michael Swerdlick, based on the screenplay for Can't Buy Me Love by Michael Swerdlick
Cinematography: Chuck Cohen
Music: Richard Gibbs
U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
Of all the 1980s teen comedies available to re-make, why did Troy Beyer select Can't Buy Me Love? The low-rent, John Hughes-inspired 1987 original has its adherents, but most of them like the movie not because it's a good film (which it isn't), but because it's so easy to mock. Can't Buy Me Love is a great film to laugh at (not with), and, watched in the right company, can be a fun experience. In updating and re-making it into a 2003 hip-hop morality play/comedy, Beyer and company (including original screenwriter Michael Swerdlick, who returned to help pen the new version) have eliminated Can't Buy Me Love's campy innocence and replaced it with an underlying sense of sleaze. The result is an atrociously unfunny, unromantic, and unpleasant product.
The story is essentially the same, complete with the unfortunate sermonizing that characterizes the denouement. (One would think that, given the chance, Swerdlick would have smoothed out the rough edges and eliminated the least plausible aspects, but he didn't. The changes are cosmetic ones necessary for time-shifting the story 20 years into the future and changing the skin color of the leads.) A nerdy high school student, Alvin (Drumline's Nick Cannon), falls for a pretty classmate named Paris (Christina Milian), who is waaaaay out of his league. But, when she finds herself in dire financial straits with no way to pay for body work needed for her mother's car, Alvin comes to the rescue, offering Paris money he has earned from cleaning pools if she will pretend to be his girlfriend for two weeks. He sees the possibility of dating her as his means of entry into the school's "popular" clique. It works - soon Alvin is hot stuff. He snubs all his old friends in favor of his new ones, and is too blind to see that Paris is really falling for him.
Can't Buy Me Love was rated PG, and, as a result, displayed a blissful naiveté about sex. The same cannot be said about the PG-13 Love Don't Cost a Thing, which is littered with tasteless innuendos. (Strangely, however, the Paris/Alvin relationship is devoid of sexual tension.) In a page stolen from American Pie, Alvin's dad (Steve Harvey) gives his son life lessons that involve condoms and tips on how to get girls. Any laughter generated by this material results more from Harvey's delivery than from the actual lines. The lack of anything resembling worthwhile humor is one thing that both versions of the story have in common.
In Can't Buy Me Love, Patrick Dempsey played a loser who was seduced and overwhelmed by the lure of popularity. In Love Don't Cost a Thing, Nick Cannon's character travels the same road, but there's a key difference. He's a jerk at the beginning, and popularity only makes him more insufferable. This is a serious problem, since we are supposed to identify with Alvin. However, the filmmakers' inability to make him likable at the start means that the movie's entire character arc collapses. Plus, there's no chemistry whatsoever between Cannon and Christina Milian, meaning that there's not even a little light sense of romance to leaven the product. Watching Love Don't Cost a Thing becomes an exercise in enduring.
The director is Troy Beyer, and the inclusion of this film on her resume is enough to warrant a quarantine where future productions are concerned. In addition to Love Don't Cost a Thing, she was responsible for the reprehensible Let's Talk About Sex (which she scripted, directed, and starred in). She also wrote the screenplay for B*A*P*S. Applying the baseball rule of "three strikes and you're out," Beyer has now whiffed.
For those who care about such things, Love Don't Cost a Thing has a moral: be true to yourself. It may be presented in an inelegant, preachy manner, but it's there. Parents might applaud this message, but they won't be as thrilled with the underlying one: if you're a hard-working, nerdy high school student, the only way to get booty is to pay for it. The filmmakers may not have had that in mind when they put the movie together, but that's the lesson more viewers are likely to take to heart.
© 2003 James Berardinelli