Teenage daydream

>> Get Over It is a charming confection

by MARK SLUTSKY

The plot of the bubbly new teen comedy Get Over It may seem familiar. High-school lovebirds Berke (Ben Foster) and Allison (Melissa Sagemiller) appear to be in the perfect relationship until poor Foster gets dumped. When Sagemiller hooks up with "Striker" (Shane West), an exchange student with a vaguely European accent who happens to be an ex-member of the boy group The Swingtown Lads, Foster kind of loses his mind. In a desperate bid to impress his ex and win her back, he joins the school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, aided by his best friend's little sister (Kirsten Dunst), who happens to have a big crush on him.

Get Over It seems to have all the standard teen movie ingredients: pretty actors, Shakespeare, slapstick comedy. But unlike other recent entries in the genre (like the dismal Boys and Girls), it actually works. The movie is just so ridiculously pop it's almost impossible to dislike. We're talking musical numbers, dream sequences, split screens, hallucinatory fantasies--the works. It all comes at you so fast and furious, what are you going to do--criticize the art direction? What's the point?

Importantly, Get Over It also features quite an achievement: a small dog who humps everything in sight and is actually kind of funny. There's actually more than a few genuinely hilarious moments in the movie, thanks in part to the grown-up supporting cast, which includes Ed Begley Jr., Swoosie Kurtz and Martin Short as the desperate-to-be-hip drama teacher. The teens are pretty good too: Foster is likeable if not spectacular, Dunst charms as always, and even thong-admiring singer Sisqo, in his first role, manages to pull it off.

Okay, so this isn't The Seventh Seal we're dealing with here--it's not even Bring It On, really. But Get Over It is certainly a charmer, strongly reminiscent of She's All That, which was also written by R. Lee Fleming Jr. There might be a couple of jokes that fall flat on their faces, but by the time you notice the scene is usually already over. If the best the exhausted teen-movie genre can hope for these days is colourful, goofy fun, well, who can really complain about that?

Get Over It opens Friday, March 9