With the recent success of such movies as American Pie and Road Trip, it comes as no surprise to see a slew of new teenager-geared movies. Boys and Girls isn't exactly in the same comedy-only genre as American Pie and Road Trip, but it does try and appeal to the same audience and use some of the same kind of situations and sketches.

Unfortunately, while both American Pie and Road Trip were funny, and at times, good movies, Boys and Girls fails miserably. Not even the presence of one of my favorite actresses, Claire Forlani could save this movie. There's just too many problems with the plot and too many situations that are just too contrived and because of this, not funny. Boys and Girls tries to focus more on a quasi-relationship between Ryan (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and Jennifer (Forlani). They meet one day on a plane flying home (or so you are lead to believe) alone without any parents and begin a very adult conversation which eventually leads to Jennifer calling Ryan ugly. Later when they meet in high school (they just so happen to go to rival schools), they have another interesting conversation and eventually Jennifer calls him dumb. By no small coincidence, they meet in college at UC Berkeley, and even though there's no apparent chemistry between the two, well, as they say, 'opposites attract.' The thing is, the movie tries to play on their own little tagline of 'opposites attack.' The problem is, it's never really funny and rather than attacking each other, they just spend most of the movie hanging out with each other.

Once you get past the horrible setting up of the love story between the two (if you want to call it that), there's just so many other problems with the movie, I can't list them all. First off, the relationship between Ryan and Hunter (Jason Biggs - American Pie), roommates at college, just doesn't make sense. From day one, they're all buddy-buddy and never have an argument even though they're about as different as two roommates could be (once again, opposites attract). It was odd to see Heather Donahue (The Blair Witch Project) not sobbing to the camera, but actually in a real role, and unfortunately, she just wasn't able to pull it off. She was great in Blair Witch, but in a serious acting role, she still has a ways to go.

Once you get past the fact that the whole movie is extremely un-funny and can only go so far with a PG-13 rating, you'll realize that Boys and Girls just isn't a good movie. There's no real insight into the relationship between Ryan and Jennifer (as other dialogue-driven movies usually provide) and there's really no truly funny points to the movie. While the movie isn't being advertised as a straight comedy, but rather a relational-comedy between two opposites, the truth couldn't be farther away. The only points at which you even get close to laughing are when Jason Biggs is on the screen, and it seems as if he were thrown in in hindsight just to try and draw some of the audience from American Pie. While Claire Forlani did do a great job trying to keep the movie afloat, even she couldn't save it. Next time, rather than trying to capitalize on the teen-romantic-comedy genre, writers, directors, and studios should read the script before putting it into production and watch the finished product before showing it to the world. If this had happened, there's probably very little chance Boys and Girls would have been reviewed on this site.

Genres: Comedy, Romance
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 90 minutes
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