This was one of my favourite teen comedies to come out of the early 2000s. I don’t know whether it was the storyline or the other brother looking like a discount Heath Ledger, but I absolutely adored it.

John Tucker Must Die follows the main character called John Tucker who is dating basically all the girls in his school, and one day three of the girls who he is dating find out. They team up with a new girl at the school, Kate, who has dealt with a lot of guys like John because her mum dates a lot of horrible men.

The three girls decide that the only way to get their revenge on John is to break his heart back and so they enlist Kate to be his newest love interest. Throughout the movie we see their relationship blossom but all the while knowing that they are only doing this to hurt him in the end, and this also affects her relationship with John Tucker’s brother who it does seem she has a romantic interest in.

This movie is really interesting because it’s very simple and fun and definitely one of those teen comedies you can watch at a sleepover and enjoy but also had deeper layers of being true to yourself and not letting other people affect you or change you just to be able to fit in. Kate was always the outsider as she never really had friends, so to now have friends with the most popular girls in school was a big confidence boost for her, but as they started to mould and change her into who they wanted her to be you can see this takes a toll on Kate.

I don’t know how teenage boys would react to this movie. Whether they would see John Tucker as a bit of a idle rather than a misogynist because he has all these girls whenever he wants them, but I think it’s a good lesson to learn that if you’re going to play with fire you’re going to get burnt. You should treat people how you want to be treated and at the end of the movie everything seems to have squared out which is nice, but it does make you wonder has it really sorted itself out or is it just going to go back to him messing about half of the school again just because he can?

I really enjoyed this movie. It’s one of my favourite teen comedies and I would happily watch it again and again and will of course recommend it to anyone. It’s up there with Mean Girls and Clueless, but has a different element to it with the whole breaking a guys heart and I think every girl can resonate with that.

What do you think of John Tucker Must Die?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding