Film: The New Guy

Title: The New Guy (2002)

Starring: DJ Qualls, Eliza Dushku, Lyle Lovett, Zooey Deschanel

Why It's Terrible: As a derivative film of a derivative genre, The New Guy offers almost nothing new. The jokes, such as they are, weren't new or revolutionary following the American Pie gross-outs, and not exactly a stellar send-up after 2001's Not Another Teen Movie. The characters were the definition of trite. Eliza Dushku, who I love with a fiery passion, is comfortable playing manic pixie dream girl, but the role should never have been written in that fashion. The awful parenting that is always displayed in these movies is never so bad that it feels like Qualls actually should be rebelling.

Why I love it: Eliza Dushku. She is convincing as a bad girl turned slightly moral. Her bikini fashion show is pretty much exactly the same as her role in Bring It On was. She's bubbly, and convincingly teenager in the film, and shows pretty much the only on-screen growth.

Zooey. She has a voice, and the best of the slight plot twists in the film.

Cameos. Appearances from Lovett, Rob Van Winkle, Kool Mo Dee, Henry Rollins, and a host of other musicians should have cemented the 2002 film as one of the best pop culture referencing films of the 1990s. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work. Alas.

Ed Ligget, tuba. The shorter gentleman band member starts off a one-note geek, and through Qualls's forced maturation becomes at least a three-note joke. As all of the unreasonably hot "high school" girls of Highland High start throwing themselves at the nerdier characters, Ed's couple is the most believable conquest.

As with many high school movies, the antics of the sports team is the means through which the plot is advanced. However, because Qualls doesn't play on the team, we're not left suffering through the montages that show us how the team gets better. Instead, we get, improbably, straight to the heart of the matter - is the geek from one high school able to change his stars at another? Ultimately, we don't really care. We like Qualls enough want him to get the stunning Dushku, and we want the jocks who completely lack redeeming qualities to be worse for the wear. We want the popular kids to be less dismissive, and we expect, somehow that the mindless high school herd will become thoughtful and forgiving.