John Tucker Must Die

If only. No one buys the farm in this Heathers-wannabe teen “satire,” a term used so loosely it’ll fly off in a stiff breeze. But the title is difficult to argue with, unless it’s to maintain that we’d all be better off if the film’s entire roster of characters had been shot in the head at the dump, greyhound-style. But enough about me: John Tucker (the plasticine Jesse Metcalf) is a rich-boy high school demigod boffing three princesses (Arielle Kebbel, Ashanti, Sophia Bush), to the revulsion of shy unpopular kid Kate (Brittany Snow). The trio discover his supa-player scheme, and plot revenge — which quickly devolves from dreams of violence (my dream too) to spiking his sports drink with estrogen and, eventually, setting Kate up as his new honey with the intent to crush his inviolable heart. The script-performance synergy is pure Disney Channel sitcom with moderate relief provided by Bush, the only hireling here who seems to have actually watched a comedy once in her short little life. Whatever the target demographic was in the preproduction phase, now it’s limited to sexually active fourteen-year-olds still retaking the sixth grade.

Now playing at a slew of local theaters