Hating "John Tucker Must Die" is something that seems almost like a prerequisite if you're not a 15-year-old girl...
The title alone practically turns away viewers...
The most famous actress in it being music pop star Ashanti requires you to snub it...
OK, fine: it made me laugh. And last time I checked I'm not a 15-year-old girl.
"John Tucker" is like "Mean Girls" reversed; not as clever or dark, but still humorous. Perennial new girl Kate (Brittany Snow) arrives at another new school after her mother (Jenny McCarthy, actually acting) falls out of another failed relationship. She gets caught up in a plot to destroy the reputation of the most popular guy at school, John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe), who it turns out is dating three girls at once: Heather (Ashanti), Beth (Sophia Bush) and Carrie (Arielle Kebbel). They find out the truth and the plan is hatched for Kate to become popular, go out with him and break his heart.
Kate naturally agrees, because we all know that the main goal in high school is to be popular.
The pranks they pull on poor Mr. Tucker are all pretty predictable — adding hormones to his drink so he becomes more emotional or publicly embarrassing him by catching him in certain articles of women's clothing — but they're all pulled off with a certain style. The equally-as-predictable conclusion comes complete with a food fight and giant crowd watching everything unravel. All that was missing from the teen movie cliché countdown was a single slow clap building to crowd-roaring applause for our main characters.
The usual moral lessons learned at the end of teen movies are missing too. No one really learns anything in this film, and at the end everyone is the same person they were at the beginning. Relationships haven't really gone anywhere and John Tucker is still, well, John Tucker. It seems everyone had a good laugh and then went right back to their lives, the past couple of weeks just zooming right through their teenage heads — just like the movie itself does for its audience, giggling down the road harmlessly.