Fidanzata in prestito

You know Hollywood's hard up for material when it starts blowing the dust off movies from as recent as the 1980's to rehash and remake (films that weren't any good to begin with, I might add). `Love Don't Cost a Thing' is a pointless update of `Can't Buy Me Love,' the tale of a high school nerd who hires the hottest babe on campus to pretend to be his girlfriend. His hope is that, through his association with her, he will gain entree into the `cool' crowd at school.

The stereotypes of adolescents that the film presents weren't fresh twenty years ago and they're even less so today. The story is utterly hackneyed and predictable what with Alvin being first an object of scorn, then - after some utterly unconvincing ghetto-`Pygmalion' makeover scenes - finding acceptance in the upper echelon of with-it kids, while at the same time turning his back on and rejecting the fellow nerds who used to be his friends. True to the formula, Alvin eventually learns a lesson or two about what being true to oneself really means.

There are virtually no funny moments in the film and the scenes between Alvin and his sex-obsessed dad begin to border on the creepy. `Love Don't Cost a Thing' may seem clever and fresh to audiences not old enough to have seen many movies, let alone the original on which this film is based. The rest of us with somewhat longer memories will gladly take a pass. What next? A remake of `Howard the Duck'?

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.

but it did keep me mildly entertained. A nerd high schooler, Alvin, comes up with the idea of fixing the hotest girl, Paris, in school's car in exchange for her to hang with him for 2 weeks. So, he becomes popular and starts blowing off his old nerd friends. You've seen this plot a thousand times. It had a few humorous moments with Alvins' dad who just wants his son to "score" and stop being a nerd. And Alvins' sister has some funny lines about why he's acting strange. It was a little disappointing to see Alvin treat Paris like crap then of course she realizes she has the hots for him.

One big complaint was that most of the high school kids in this movie looked like they were in there mid-30s, especially Alvin's nerd friends.

FINAL VERDICT: I think it is aimed for a teenage audience, and if you are over 22, I don't recommend it.

I liked it. It was nothing special, but I liked it. It was a good story about issues that most teens deal with everyday. And it was funny.

In the movie, Alvin (Cannon) is a nobody who wants to be a popular somebody. As somebody who once wished he could be more popular in high school, I completely understand where Alvin was coming from. So when popular cheerleader, Paris (Milian) gets into a jam, Alvin offers to help her if she pretends to be his girlfriend.

But Alvin soon finds out that there's more to popularity than he realized. As Paris puts it, "Popularity is like a job" and you have to "work" to keep up with everyone else. In the end, Alvin learns that it's far more rewarding to just be himself. (There's a cliché we never get tired of hearing.)

I thought the acting in the movie was great. Nick, Christina and the rest of the cast were believable in their roles, but still managed to stay funny. I especially liked Steve Harvey, playing Nick Cannon's 'Stuck in the 70's' dad.

This movie may not be 10/10 great, but if you're looking for a good date movie, you may want to consider this one.