Love Don't Cost a Thing

I'll be fair in saying that I didn't have high hopes for Troy Beyer's "Love Don't Cost A Thing," a movie that stars Nick Cannon and singer Christina Milian in an "urbanized" remake of the 1987 romantic comedy, "Can't Buy Me Love." Original "Can't Buy Me Love" scriptwriter Michael Swerdlick contributes to Beyer's remake script, which features Cannon and Milian in the roles of the geek and the beauty, two roles made famous in 1987 by Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Petersen.

Cannon plays Alvin Johnson a.k.a. "Pool Boy" (he gets his name because he cleans people's swimming pools) and Milian plays Paris Morgan, the most popular girl in school. Alvin is a bit of an automotive genius, if nothing else, since he's trying to win a scholarship to a tech school with the high-tech engine that he and his friends have constructed.

Alvin is tired of being made fun of by the popular kids and decides that he wants a piece of the action, but is unsure of where to search; his friends naturally think he's crazy for thinking up such a scheme. But he's not hearing that though, and he wants memories of their high school years.

He gets his chance when Paris crashes her mom's Cadillac Escalade and he offers to do the repairs. In return, however, she must pose as his girlfriend - for two weeks. Alvin and Paris of course face the strident scorn of the cool kids and pretty soon Alvin grows pretty attached to his newfound fame.

Without really realizing it, he forgets what he already had, being that he makes pariahs out of his best friends, frightens his parents especially the father (Steve Harvey) with his strange behavior, and Paris soon begins to miss the geeky Alvin that she really liked.

"Love Don't Cost A Thing" retreads the familiar territory of most of the high school comedies of yesteryear: the uncool guy gets the pretty girl - after his plan has been exposed - and everything gradually returns to normalcy, and tries to make amends with his friends that he forgot while on his path to glory.

For the first half, "Love" is actually quite fun to watch, and even it brought back memories of my high school career, which I left behind when I graduated in June of 2004.

The second half is where we run into trouble, not because of directing and poor scriptwriting or any other technical difficulties, but because Cannon's transformation seemed to be really... something. I'll be the first to admit that he does some pretty mean things to his friends and to Paris while on his ego trip of popularity; even this is too much and made a little too believable and for that I really despised Alvin for what he did.

Cannon and Milian are a great couple and have great chemistry, but I remembered where it's all going to lead eventually, which is in that same direction that most teen comedies go.

The biggest perk out of it all is that "Love" doesn't resort to gross-out humor and sex gags to really win the interest of the viewer, and for that I'm grateful. Other than that, there's not much else.

***NOTE*** There's one scene that never ceases to amaze me, and that's when Alvin first serves up his proposal to Paris. He makes his move, Paris asks what he wants in return. Alvin looks away, and out comes the priceless line, "Oh what? You think I'm some cheap 'ho?" Alvin of course replies, "No, no sex. I just want to rent you." Paris considers, and then agrees to being his girl. And she puts her foot down about him not thinking about sex, or looking at her booty. Priceless.

"Love Don't Cost A Thing" buys a 5/10

Do you remember the 80's? Did you collect Garbage Pail Kids while the NKOTB-buttoned girls played Care Bears and Kid Sister?

If you did, then there's a chance you had to suffer through quite a few 80's films.. Or rather, it felt like you were being made to suffer, way back when.

We're a little older now, maybe more mature and hopefully a little more open to rediscovering the 80's.

"Can't Buy Me Love" is an 80's masterpiece I still enjoy today. Dempsey's nasal sonnets, his little brother's hustles and their parents' 30-something attitude to everything are classic. Ranked up there with "Weird Science", "Real Genius" and "Raising Arizona", the original tested the times while paving new ground.

"Love Don't Cost A Thing" is a paycheck for the producers whose idea of a good time must be making K-Mart xerox copies of ideas they wished they had first.

If they have a Triple-Gold Globe Awards for the likes of Master P and Snoop's acting quality, I'll make sure to steal a cell phone and call the 900 number that gives your ghetto fabulous trash 5 Bling-Blings and two slaps across your face on GP, Uuuugh.

This 'Movie' is hard to flush, let alone swallow.

Prior to watching this, I had not seen "Can't Buy Me Love". This is one of those movies that came out while I was still delivering papers, and I didn't see it because I read horrible reviews for it in the paper. I decided to finally watch it, and while the reviews were way too harsh, this is not a great romantic comedy, and it falls flat largely because of Nick Cannons over-the-top and somehow, still wooden at the same time performance. This actually could have been a pretty fun movie with a different leading man. Christina Milian does a good job, and you cannot fault her. It would also help if Cannon and Milian had more onscreen time together, as it is a bit limited. They just never build a really strong connection, and I'm not entirely sure why Milian would be interested in him for real. I actually think it would have been a better movie if Kenan Thompson was the lead, or hell, Kal Penn, and Cannon was one of the sidekicks, he just cannot handle this role at all. He tries, and sometimes it is fun, but it is wildly inconsistent.

Steve Harvey is over-the-top cringe, I really really think someone else should have played his dad. Every scene he is in is painful to watch, his expressions, his vocal tone, everything feels grossly out of place, and he is normally pretty funny.

The movie is filled with some great hip hop and rap music from the early 2000's, and is a blast from the past, the dancing, the clothes, etc. I do love that Alvin is a hardworking intelligent entrepreneur, but again his character is OTT exaggerated by cannon, he comes across less cool than Urkel actually. He does not feel like a real person, but a bizarre caricature.

If you're a teen though, you might still enjoy it, and I did enjoy it at times, even though I am well out of my teens, but I feel as thought this could have been a really good movie, and it was, instead a missed opportunity.

Ima start by saying i got a guilty pleasure of watching this film just cause it was one of the teen films i grew up watching, i actually took the time to watch the original film starring Patrick Dempsey and i agree the original is so much better, ok guys here's the deal, don't hate too much on the film, it has some good moments in the film, i do enjoy Christina Milian's role but I felt Nick Cannon's role, he just ended up pushing his friends away and having his ego there 90 percent of the time, his character didn't do much and really didn't interact with Milian's character most of the film, i enjoyed the film for what it was, a mindless, dumb, and fun film to see

Unlike the original movie from 1987 "can't buy me love", "Love doesn't cost a thing" is too slow a little bit boring, most of the characters are annoying and the movie as a whole is just not fun. They try a little bit too hard to be cool and updated but as the girl said in the movie "Urkel has become gangster" it's just not it. the idea was good, re-make the classic and the beloved film of the 80's in the millennium version, but we've seen too many teen movies that look and sounds just like this, and they are better. If you like Christina Milian you'll LOVE her in this movie, because she is so amazing in this role, but that's the only good thing i have to say about this movie.