Hey Dunst: Your Movie Sucks. Get Over It

When is Hollywood going to learn that citing Shakespeare as inspiration gives absolutely no credence to these high school romantic comedies with terrible screenplays that seem to come out every other weekend?

The latest film to fall into that trap is the almost-awful Get Over It, which stars Ben Foster as Berke Landers, a high school senior who gets dumped by his girlfriend and then tries to win her back by auditioning for the spring play-the bard's A Midsummer Night's Dream-in which she and her new boyfriend are starring. Of course, another young lady enters the picture, here in the form of the beautiful and delightful Kirsten Dunst, as the younger sister of Berke's best friend. Can you guess who Berke ends up with in the end?

Get Over It is so formulaic it's painful. Its recipe features the mandatory pair of best friends (Colin Hanks and Sisqo), the rapper-turned-actor (repeat: Sisqo), the basketball playoff game, the unidentified ingredient in the party's punch, the evil new boyfriend with the foreign accent (Shane West) and the fantasy sequences that come out of nowhere.

Just about the only thing that saves this film from complete failure is the mighty effort these actors apply to an impossibly hackneyed script. Foster, excellent as the lead in Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights, does as much as he can to bring dignity to this part and manages not to come off as the smug and obnoxious pretty-boy that Freddie Prinze, Jr. always seems to. Dunst is harmless and charming, but you begin to wonder why she stopped picking parts in smart movies like Interview With the Vampire and The Virgin Suicides. Even Martin Short delivers a funny turn as the director of the play, in a role that recalls a more neurotic and grandiose Franck Eggelhoffer from Father of the Bride.

But neither Foster nor Dunst nor Short can salvage this script. This is a movie to catch on DTV one Tuesday night when you don't want to write an essay. Better yet, read A Midsummer Night's Dream.