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When I read I Love You, Beth Cooper – and wrote about the book here a few months ago – I knew that the on-the-way film adaptation would be thorny. Now that I’ve seen the film, I can say that it is not merely thorny; it is a textbook case of an adaptation gone wrong. Working from his own mostly delightful novel, Simpsons vet Larry Doyle is like a novice driver who, in trying to avoid potholes, veers to hit every one. And, in what he should consider a betrayal of epic proportions, Doyle gets absolutely no help from anyone involved with the film – not from the cast, not from the editor, and certainly not from director Chris Columbus, who is utterly helpless when his material is not inherently strong.
I hasten to add that I Love You, Beth Cooper is not that bad – I think it’s a bit better than our Peter Martin lets on, and certainly better than our Eric D. Snider insists. But the movie – still about a geeky, virginal high school senior who confesses his love for the class hottie in his graduation speech – is sappy, muddled, and just mystifyingly unfunny. Consider that the novel is hip, razor-sharp, and hilarious, and you start to get a sense of what a rare specimen this adaptation is. So what happened?
Continue reading From Page to Screen: ‘I Love You, Beth Cooper’ Part 2