Nicole (Hart), a pert, plucky purveyor of school spirit, wants Brad (Gabriel Carpenter), the basketball team's star player, and almost had him, until he fell, quite literally, for the allure of a cutie-pie cheerleader. Chase (Grenier), mischief-maker extraordinaire, gets dumped by his activist girlfriend, Dulcie (Larter), for refusing to participate in an animal rights demonstration. Nicole has a brainstorm: she and Chase, neighbours but not friends, will pose as a couple when convenient, for purposes of showing up Brad and Dulcie.
Nicole insists on prepping up her fake boyfriend, and so Chase abandons his slacker duds for button-down shirts and leather jackets. She could use a more flattering wardrobe, too, as could Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, who wiped clean with a little foundation the identity of Ally Sheedy's character at the close of that film, and Can't Buy Me Love's Amanda Peterson, who wouldn't associate with Patrick Dempsey until he put mousse in his hair. Why can't Nicole undergo a transformation as well? It's an irritating custom of teen movies, as is the instant acceptance of the new and improved outcast among the popular.
Thankfully, Chase's makeover leads to unexpectedly insightful dialogue among his own circle of friends. Mark Webber's "Designated Dave" (named so for his willingness to chauffer drunken members of the in-crowd, even though they don't respect him in the morning) wants what Chase has gained from the arrangement; he lacks self-respect but accuses others of lacking it first. The filmmakers perceptively delve into the "grass is always greener" mentality that teenagers have.
Drive Me Crazy has other innovations going for it, such as genuine wit (notably in its hommage to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl), and conflict that arises from heartfelt discussions between intelligent people (as opposed to a stock jock villain, though Brad is unrealized, to say the least). Its screenwriter, Rob Thomas, created the unfairly yanked TV series "Cupid", and his original voice, that of a cautious romantic, is all over the details.
In the end, though, Drive Me Crazy doesn't go far enough in reinventing the wheel as to stand out from the pack, and falls prey to Wonder Bread Syndrome, which irked a colleague of mine who knows from experience that an all-white basketball team doesn't happen in SoCal. That Nicole never quite digs the real chase, preferring the walking Gap advertisement he becomes, is another sticking point. (I longed for the tortured artist sentiment of Some Kind of Wonderful, in which everyone is asked to become something they aren't, and don't fall in love until they change back.)
Drive Me Crazy sputters to an unfortunately souring closing scene that's there, I have surmised, to push the running time past a stigmatic 90 minutes. (Aren't you always sceptical of a non-animated motion picture that runs less than an hour-and-a-half?) Director John Schultz gives us the ending we want (granted, without much fanfare) and then dismantles his handiwork with an epilogue that drove me every synonym for "crazy" you can think of.
Perhaps even more perplexing is Fox's decision to release Drive Me Crazy on DVD in anamorphic video, only the seventh time they have done so. Letterboxed at 1.85:1, the transfer boasts near-perfect sharpness and seemingly accurate, evenly saturated colours, but the image is too dark for a bubblegum comedy by a country mile, with detail often lost in a muck of deep browns and blacks. The DD 5.1 mix is very clean though not particularly active; the music often sounds as good as it would in a club (that's a compliment), and some crowd activity at b-ball games makes use of the surrounds as far as effects go.
Extras include a theatrical trailer (which contains so much excised footage it could qualify as a deleted scenes section), four distinct television spots, a video for Jars of Clay's "Unforgetful You" and a hyperlink to that band's website, plus Britney Spear's "Drive Me Crazy" clip, a headache-inducing rocker that is mercifully underused in the film itself. Which leads me to ask: should a fairly sophisticated teenage dramedy have relied so heavily in the marketing on the pneumatic Spears, a Mini Pop once removed? No wonder it bombed--the studio overlooked the delicate demographical line that separates a twelve-year-old from someone thirteen.-Bill Chambers
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