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63If physical appearance creates its own class system (in high school and beyond), then Qualls is perfect for this proselytizing role. He has that rarest of movie-star faces -- one that over comes the tyranny of beauty.
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63The New Guy doesn't have a new idea in its head, but it trods over the old ground with such wit and heart that its lack of originality can be overlooked, if not entirely forgiven.
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58A Jekyll-and-Hyde teen comedy that sounds like a Pauly Shore reject, but Qualls moves his marionette body around with a true clown's effervescence, and he does rubber-faced parodies of youth cool that are just what youth cool deserves.
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50It makes little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is sometimes quite cheerfully original.
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50Uneven but occasionally hilarious teen comedy.
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40A comedy just funny enough to make viewers wish it were far funnier.
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40A bad-taste comedy with a heart.
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40It isn't very good, but it doesn’t seem to care, which turns out to be rather refreshing.
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38Tries everything possible to win you over -- satire, gross-out comedy, even earnest romance. But as any high-schooler can tell you, the harder you try, the bigger you fall.
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25You have to have faith that kids will recognize a bad movie when it's foisted on them -- and they don't get much worse than The New Guy.
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25Anyone who wants to enjoy himself at a good movie about a high school geek who undergoes a transformation should go see "'Spider-Man" again instead.
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Lame, haphazard teen comedy.
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25Probably would have worked better as a slamming soundtrack than as a muddle-headed movie.
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25The slapdash comic flailing of screenwriter and TV scribe-turned-director Ed Decter is only compounded by a script so disconnected you have to wonder if pages were lost on the way to the set.
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20Lame, derivative comedy.
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20In an inspired bit of casting, Lyle Lovett plays the dad of the goofy-looking Diz/Gil. That these two could be related might be the only believable touch in this whole misfired thing.
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20Various actors deserving of better (including Zooey Deschanel, Eddie Griffin and Lyle Lovett) suffer through the undercooked material, while love interest Eliza Dushku gamely gets through both a bikini-modeling montage and a mechanical bull ride, but none of their efforts can save this film.
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12Reaches breathtaking lows of incoherence, sexism, racial stereotyping, and -- did I say incoherence?
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10An unintentional parody of every teen movie made in the last five years. Which can be the only rational explanation for making such a mess all over the screen.
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10Overall aroma of movie junk food.
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10Feckless and crude without any particularly funny redeeming value. If there's anything more to this poor excuse of a movie than immediately meets the eye, I'll get back to you.
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A particularly loathsome piece of cultural detritus, a trashy, crass piece of work that panders to the anxieties and desires of adolescents without a scintilla of sympathy or coherence.
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0An ugly-duckling tale so hideously and clumsily told it feels accidental. Surely, no one PLANNED something this disastrously unfunny.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 24 out of 34
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Mixed: 1 out of 34
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Negative: 9 out of 34
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5
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EnzoP.0Sure this movie was a huge laugh out loud but it was so stupid so I have to give it a big flat old zero.