Love Don't Cost a Thing

You know Hollywood's hard up for material when it starts blowing the dust off movies from as recent as the 1980's to rehash and remake (films that weren't any good to begin with, I might add). `Love Don't Cost a Thing' is a pointless update of `Can't Buy Me Love,' the tale of a high school nerd who hires the hottest babe on campus to pretend to be his girlfriend. His hope is that, through his association with her, he will gain entree into the `cool' crowd at school.

The stereotypes of adolescents that the film presents weren't fresh twenty years ago and they're even less so today. The story is utterly hackneyed and predictable what with Alvin being first an object of scorn, then - after some utterly unconvincing ghetto-`Pygmalion' makeover scenes - finding acceptance in the upper echelon of with-it kids, while at the same time turning his back on and rejecting the fellow nerds who used to be his friends. True to the formula, Alvin eventually learns a lesson or two about what being true to oneself really means.

There are virtually no funny moments in the film and the scenes between Alvin and his sex-obsessed dad begin to border on the creepy. `Love Don't Cost a Thing' may seem clever and fresh to audiences not old enough to have seen many movies, let alone the original on which this film is based. The rest of us with somewhat longer memories will gladly take a pass. What next? A remake of `Howard the Duck'?

Do you remember the 80's? Did you collect Garbage Pail Kids while the NKOTB-buttoned girls played Care Bears and Kid Sister?

If you did, then there's a chance you had to suffer through quite a few 80's films.. Or rather, it felt like you were being made to suffer, way back when.

We're a little older now, maybe more mature and hopefully a little more open to rediscovering the 80's.

"Can't Buy Me Love" is an 80's masterpiece I still enjoy today. Dempsey's nasal sonnets, his little brother's hustles and their parents' 30-something attitude to everything are classic. Ranked up there with "Weird Science", "Real Genius" and "Raising Arizona", the original tested the times while paving new ground.

"Love Don't Cost A Thing" is a paycheck for the producers whose idea of a good time must be making K-Mart xerox copies of ideas they wished they had first.

If they have a Triple-Gold Globe Awards for the likes of Master P and Snoop's acting quality, I'll make sure to steal a cell phone and call the 900 number that gives your ghetto fabulous trash 5 Bling-Blings and two slaps across your face on GP, Uuuugh.

This 'Movie' is hard to flush, let alone swallow.

but it did keep me mildly entertained. A nerd high schooler, Alvin, comes up with the idea of fixing the hotest girl, Paris, in school's car in exchange for her to hang with him for 2 weeks. So, he becomes popular and starts blowing off his old nerd friends. You've seen this plot a thousand times. It had a few humorous moments with Alvins' dad who just wants his son to "score" and stop being a nerd. And Alvins' sister has some funny lines about why he's acting strange. It was a little disappointing to see Alvin treat Paris like crap then of course she realizes she has the hots for him.

One big complaint was that most of the high school kids in this movie looked like they were in there mid-30s, especially Alvin's nerd friends.

FINAL VERDICT: I think it is aimed for a teenage audience, and if you are over 22, I don't recommend it.

Ima start by saying i got a guilty pleasure of watching this film just cause it was one of the teen films i grew up watching, i actually took the time to watch the original film starring Patrick Dempsey and i agree the original is so much better, ok guys here's the deal, don't hate too much on the film, it has some good moments in the film, i do enjoy Christina Milian's role but I felt Nick Cannon's role, he just ended up pushing his friends away and having his ego there 90 percent of the time, his character didn't do much and really didn't interact with Milian's character most of the film, i enjoyed the film for what it was, a mindless, dumb, and fun film to see

This movie was just okay. Not too sure why they decided to remake this class 80s flick. I still like the original better and Patrick Dempsey made the character much more believable than Nick Cannon can. Loved the scenes of Nick Cannon cleaning the pool and dancing to Michael Jackson. Christina Millian was okay, but the acting was not that great from her. The best actor in the movie were "Alvin"s sidekick friends, Kenan Thompson and Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. The soundtrack was pretty unremarkable and that was one thing I remembered from the original. It was pack full of classic 80s songs. Overall, the plot was as cheesy as the original and pretty hard to believe. Some of the plot was random, such as Christina's boyfriend being in the NBA and cheating on her. Some lines of dialog directly from the original movie.