Can’t Hardly Wait is more a teen movie than a romantic comedy, kind of along the lines of Say Anything, yet less heavy and more fun. It is a movie about fate and the more important aspect that comes after that – choice. We begin the movie on Graduation Day, where our lead character discovers that the girl he has been madly in love with for four years has finally broken up with her high school boyfriend, gifting him with the possibility of trying his luck. Preston Meyers (Ethan Embry) is simply adorable. He looks at the world with a wide-eyed awe, and is definitely a believer of fate.
He narrates the events leading up to him meeting Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt), demonstrating how fate played a big part in him seeing her, but because he hesitated, she ended up with someone else. They hide the girl’s face in the narration, which is cute I guess, since it builds up the anticipation of her entrance. But I guess you would be spoiled if you knew it was Jennifer Love Hewitt. Still, that girl sure knows how to make an entrance.
They learn that some girl is throwing a party, so Preston decides that his best chance to tell Amanda how he feels would be that party, since he would be leaving for Dartmouth the very next day. He drags along his girl best friend Denise (Lauren Ambrose), much to her dismay, and they attend the last party of their high school lives.
The girl who is throwing the party seems very uptight and so afraid of the party goers damaging things, it made me wonder why she was throwing the party in the first place. Anyway, there are a few sub-plots at play. One of them involves the nerd of the school William Lichter (Charlie Korsmo), who concocts a plan to get revenge on the school jock for bullying him and making his life miserable. He gets his first taste of alcohol at the party, which causes him to do crazy things and become quite popular. Girls are even fighting to hook up with him. The party is literally some upside down world, the nerd is the coolest guy at the party, and Mike (Peter Facinelli), the more popular guy, is alone. When he realises that singlehood is not all that it is cracked up to be, he tries to get back with Amanda, which backfires on him when she rejects him in front of everyone. The nerd and the jock bond during the party and Mike even covers for William when they get arrested. I didn’t really care for this sub-plot, mainly because I didn’t really care for Mike and William as characters.
The other sub-plot is the love story between Kenny (Seth Green) and Denise, which was kinda cute though not properly fleshed out. A lot of people preferred this story in comparison to the one between Preston and Amanda, citing substance and history adding to the authenticity of the relationship. I mean sure, they used to be best friends, stopped being best friends in high school because of their different paths, but I just didn’t buy it, you know? It felt so weird, even at the end when they were sitting together in the booth, I was like my god this is a strange relationship. I think they feel it too? It doesn’t feel like a long-lasting type of love.
As it turns out, it is not only Preston who wishes to try his luck with Amanda, other guys do as well, and he walks in on some guy kissing her. Thinking he has lost his chance, he leaves the party, dumping the letter he wrote to Amanda in the trash. By some stroke of luck (the weirdest piece of luck), the letter somehow makes it back to her, which is why I said fate is a huge aspect in this movie. She starts searching the party for Preston and we learn that while he admired her, she didn’t even know who he was.
Just as Preston is about to give up, he meets an Angel stripper (Jenna Elfman) who gives him good advice about love. Fate only takes you a part of the way, you need to make the rest of your journey on your own. This gives Preston the push to go back to the party and tell Amanda how he feels. He does this, but he catches her at a bad moment, where every other guy was also confessing to her. She didn’t know that he was the one who wrote the letter, so she was cruel in her rejection. She figures out who he is when she checks the yearbook and realises what she has done. It is interesting that it is the letter that seals the deal for her, not so much Preston, but his words. In the words of Jane Austen, “Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.” This is so very true. Letter-writing is truly a lost art.
Just as Preston gets up to meet his train, Amanda comes to meet him at the station. I love the tentative looks they share with each other – looks of attraction and possibility. It is my favourite scene in the movie, and probably the reason why I prefer Preston and Amanda’s storyline to Denise and Kenny’s. The song playing in the background is so well-suited to the scene, “Only You” by Yazoo. I thought the kiss looked rather nice as well, Ethan Embry looks like a good kisser. Apparently, in a Reddit AMA he did, he said the kiss was not a very pleasant experience as he was dating someone and he smoked a lot, so Jennifer gave him some breath mints before the scene haha.
Movie Rating: 6/10, fun movie to watch and I liked the chemistry between the leads even if it was for brief moments, but I guess I have trouble connecting to their experience of teenhood and the party life.
Bored Hopeless Romantic 