Director Chris Columbus' new movie I Love You, Beth Cooper is a "joyless, offensively stupid end-of-high-school farce," said Scott Foundas in The Village Voice. Starring Hayden Panettiere as a "cheerleading goddess" and Paul Rust as the "nerdy valedictorian" who professes his love for her during his commencement speech, this film is a "listless succession of house trashings, party crashings," and "realizations that beautiful people can be insecure, too." (watch the trailer for I Love You, Beth Cooper)
I Love You, Beth Cooper isn't a great movie, said Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun, but it's a "decent, genial youth comedy." The film's "fun never rises to the proper explosive levels, mainly because Rust is so wrong as" the lead nerd. But Hayden Panettiere is a "gifted, attractive" actress and her performance makes this movie worth watching.
"The secret weapon here is Panettiere," said Luke Y. Thompson in E! Online, "who may lure in the boys with her looks, but who is also a genuinely formidable actress who renders in Beth a complex soul." And we've all "seen nerds pine for less-unattainable-than-expected hotties before, but rarely does it feel this real" and "funny."
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