April 9, 1999, Never Been Kissed hit the airwaves and quickly became one of the foremost favored chick flicks of the 90’s, making it one of the best throw back Thursday movies for you and your friends.
A young Drew Barrymore plays Josie Geller the Copy Editor for the Chicago Sun-times. Josie is the youngest Copyeditor in company history. But has a dream of becoming a reporter. As if a dream come true, Josie is given her first real assignment. Chief executive Rigfort (Garry Marshall) assigned Josie to go undercover as highschooler and learning what they do.Time for Josie to throw away her Gaucho pants and cut off her dead ends because she’s off to the land of misfit toys.
Little known fact is that Josie was known as “Josie Grossie” in high school. The audience learns about this when they meet her brother Rob (David Arquette), and he reminds her of the harsh reality that was her high school experience. Rob on the other hand was the Mr. Popular, and steps in to help his sister learn how to maneuver high school. With the past Josie had with high school she took this moment to relive it but make it bigger and better.
Throughout her resurrection in high school Josie makes friends and foe, but one very important friend is her teacher Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan). Sam is the hot english teacher that every student has the “hot’s”. Sam starts to have an eye for Josie when she shows her smarty pants off in his class. After that the teacher student relationship grows past request for letters of rec, and the annual term paper. This becomes the inspiration of Josie’s undercover piece. “Teacher student relationships, how far is too far.”
The whole student teacher relationship Overall was a contradiction to the movie. As it added flavor and depth to the movie, killed it at the same time. Every student has had that teacher crush, but never does it actually follows suit. NBK over dramatises this situation, by making the teacher an active participant in the relationship. No sane teacher would do such a thing though, for they would lose their job in seconds.
After this slight set back everything else in the movie was almost flawless. NBK produced $84,565,230 dollars in the box office. By breaking barriers with a flavored cast of new and experienced actors. Names like Drew Barrymore, Leelee Sobieski, Jessica Alba, James Franco, Garry Marshal and Octavia Spencer. These are only some of the big names on the roster.
Never Been Kissed, receives four stars for it’s creative but honest representation of the high school life. It’s amazing how a movie produced 17 years ago, still holds true on young minds today. By exposing different experiences and emotions Never Been Kissed will stay just as popular for years to come.
Rotten tomatoes on the other hand gave a ratings of 57% and said it was “Unoriginal and unremarkable high school satire adds little to the genre.”
