I Love You, Beth Cooper the latest teen comedy to be released by Fox Home Entertainment, on the shelves November 3rd 2009.

While the film makers set out to pay tribute to almost every teen comedy that preceded it, I feel that they met with limited success.

The premise of the movie is that for his valedictorian speech, Denis Cooverman decides to take the opportunity declare his love for Beth Cooper, the most popular girl in his year.

He also opts to unintentionally insult the class bully, Beth’s boyfriend and even to ‘out’ his long time best friend.

These revelations are the inciting incident for the film, causing Beth Cooper and her friends to attend Cooverman’s graduation party, followed by her psycho boyfriend who is out to teach him a lesson.

The movie then follows the adventures of Beth, her friends Cammy and Treece, Denis and his friend Rich as they avoid the angry boyfriend while trying to party on graduation day.

On the plus side, there is a nice underlying theme where graduation means completely different things to the two main characters.

For Denis it is the opportunity to put his miserable High School experiences behind him and move on to a brighter future in college.

For Beth, High School might well have been her peak, and while she was super popular and had a great time, her future is less optimistic.

During their time together they also get to learn more about each other and to see each other in a more realistic light.

On the down side, a number of the scenarios presented in the movie are kind of ludicrous, and we have to wonder why the teens don’t just call the police and have the offenders arrested for what are obviously criminal actions.

For me the ’suspension of reality’ just didn’t work at all.

While the movie features Hero star Hayden Panettiere in the role of Beth Cooper, rest of the cast is largely unknown and  includes Paul Rust, Jack T. Carpenter, Lauren London, Lauren Storm and Shawn Roberts.

We also see Cynthia Stevenson from Dead Like Me playing the role of Denis’ mother.

I was surprised to find that I Love You, Beth Cooper was directed by Chris Columbus, the man behind Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

I wasn’t surprised that the movie was panned by critics - it earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 14% and an IMDb score of 5/10.

I Love You, Beth Cooper didn’t do so well at the cinema either, reaching $14.8M at the US box office.

The video on the disc is an AVC 1080p encode at 35 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

Check out the details page for I Love You, Beth Cooper to see full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc.

The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 5.1 channels - 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.

The disc is a dual layer BD50, with 42.9 GB used and is coded for Region A.

The Outrageous Alternate Ending feels to me like the original ending that came across as being a bit over the top.

In a lot of ways it feels like the ending that one might expect, and overall I think they made a good decision to change it.

There is also a selection of deleted scenes that wouldn’t have really added much to the story had they been included.

The essence of the story is discussed in I Love You, Larry Doyle through interviews with writer Larry Doyle and the cast of the movie.

The We Are All Different, But That’s a Good Thing featurette delves into the diversity of the cast and characters and their interactions.

The Peanut Butter Toast song is an improvised song performed by actor Paul Rust.

Fox Movie Channel Presents In Character segments are presented for actors Paul Rust and Hayden Panettiere.

For me, and I guess many of the critics and cinema going public, I Love You, Beth Cooper didn’t really work as the film makers intended.

While I did enjoy some of the underlying character interaction, overall the movie just didn’t work for me.

That said, I Love You, Beth Cooper is a decent Blu-ray release from Fox Home Entertainment.

The retail price is $39.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $25.99, saving 35%!

Extras:

• An Outrageous Alternate Ending
• Deleted Scenes
• I Love You, Larry Doyle
• We Are All Different, But That’s a Good Thing
• Peanut Butter Toast
• Fox Movie Channel Presents In Character with Paul Rust
• Fox Movie Channel Presents In Character with Hayden Panettiere

Synopsis:

When Denis Cooverman, the geekiest guy in high school, proclaims his love for super-popular Beth Cooper during his valedictorian speech, everyone is…well… speechless! But the real shock comes that night when Beth shows up at Denis’ house with her two best friends to show him how the cool kids party. You’ll lol as Denis tries to keep up with Beth - and stay away from her maniacal ex-boyfriend Kevin and his ticked-off pals. Plus, watch Denis and Beth take their hilarious relationship to a whole new level with the outrageous alternate ending you didn’t see in theaters!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.