You're sure this isn't a remake of a Pat Boone movie?

Rating: 3/10 (19 February 2002)

Amiable diversion for the first half-hour or so, with the rotten high school kids being nasty to one another. And it's all disarmingly tame, like one of those '50s teen B-movies where the juvenile-delinquent boy is reformed by the gawky girl. There's the high school play, the first kiss, the lunchroom hierarchy; all that's missing is the soda shop. (Don't these kids have cell phones? Don't they spend endless hours instant-messaging one another?) Then it goes all Hallmark and soft-focus, heavy-handedly folds in religion, and springs its unsurprising surprise about its heroine (and Mandy Moore, especially in the early scenes, is quirky and interesting and probably too good for this material). Finally it staggers to a gooey conclusion, by which time virtually every character has forgiven every other character for everything. You don't have to be too much of a cynic to question that. Maybe some very impressionable teenage girls will respond to this Nutrasweet dish; I'm not so sure about the rest of us. It's like Ned Flanders' kids' idea of a date movie.