Boys and Girls

Written by: The Drews (Andrew Lowery and Andrew Miller) Starring: Freddie Prinze, Jr., Claire Forlani, Jason Biggs, Amanda Detmer, Heather Donahue

From the very first moment that Ryan and Jennifer meet, on an airplane, as precocious school kids, we know they are going to wind up together. That is the beauty, and the limitation, of this romantic comedy formula. By the time they grow up to be the incredibly appealing Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Claire Forlani, the only question is how clever are the obstacles the writers place between them, and how cleverly they overcome those obstacles. “Boys and Girls” has a lot in common with “When Harry Met Sally...” (not a bad picture to use as a model) except that this time, the guy is the uptight, rigid one, and the girl is the free spirit. (There is even a scene in which Jennifer makes a scene in a public place, as Meg Ryan did so memorably in the earlier picture, though the context--and the content--is different.) Like Harry and Sally, Jennifer and Ryan keep running into each other over the course of several years. They meet as kids (on the aforementioned plane), in high school, and then again in college. Each time, they end up annoying each other.

Then they become best pals and talk endlessly about their lives and dates. They have more fun with each other than they do with anyone else. They do date-like things with each other even though they don’t view them as dates, and they completely ignore what everyone else in the movie (and the theater) already knows: that they are meant for each other--in fact, they are already in love. Then they wind up sleeping together on impulse, and the friendship becomes strained and awkward. They drift apart, and are about to separate forever, when, at the last minute, one of them (I won’t say which) realizes their folly, and they reconcile. Happy endings all around, please. It’s all very genteel, and amusing enough, though the conclusion is so foregone that you wish the Drews had made it a little tougher on the principals. They might at least have offered up some legitimate romantic competition. Every other guy we see Jennifer with seems to be a biker or a bore (even she doesn’t like them), and Ryan’s other (brief) interests are not much better.

There is a theme in the movie struggling to get out, about having to understand what it is you want before you can get it, but if real life choices were as obvious as the ones in this movie, we would all have an easier time of it. Had there been some viable competition for the affections of Ryan and Jennifer, the story would have had more narrative tension, and the movie would have been more engaging. As it is, we sit there waiting for them to kiss and make up, with absolutely no doubt as to the outcome. Rooting for the couple is half the fun of these pictures, but here the other team has already left the field. (Furthermore, the conceit of spectacularly attractive people running around with powerful insecurities about their appeal is a bit shopworn, if not outright annoying.)

What if Jennifer and Ryan knew exactly how attractive they were, and that they really could choose from an array of equally attractive partners? Then they would have a dilemma, and the story would have had some heat. In some respects, the subplots involving Jennifer’s roommate Amy (Detmer) and Ryan’s pal Hunter (Biggs, fresh from “American Pie”) are more absorbing. These two are less photogenically perfect, so their plights and insecurities are much more believable, and therefore more interesting. Hunter is out there trying (and failing) to score with the ladies at every opportunity. He is there mostly for comic relief (and he is funny); his travails, though, explicitly address the theme of having to know and like yourself before you can know what you want and appeal to others. He and Ryan actually talk about it, though Ryan doesn’t seem to take the lesson any better than Hunter. A brief scene raising questions about Amy’s sexuality is left totally unresolved, as if the filmmakers wanted to avoid any potential threat to the general pleasantness of the proceedings. Director Iscove (who did last year’s “She’s All That”) does a nice job with his stars, and makes good use of the Bay area locale.

He certainly gets as much mileage as possible out of the script; we only wish there were more there to work with. He also keeps the picture moving, which is especially important given the lack of suspense about whether these two crazy kids will ever get together. Iscove knows that he has powerhouse wattage in Prinze and Forlani, and he lights up the screen with them. There are worse ways to spend ninety minutes. (6/24/2000) [Note: if you go looking for the scene from the preview with Hunter in the Victoria’s Secret model dressing room, it runs with the end credits.]