Can't Buy Me Love

Name: Can't Buy Me Love
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Released: August 14, 1987
Duration: 94 min
Rating: 36
Cast: Amanda Peterson, Patrick Dempsey

1987

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Generally unfavorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

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8.0	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 5 Ratings

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Can't Buy Me Love

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Movie Details & Credits

Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: August 14, 1987 | PG-13

Starring: Amanda Peterson, Patrick Dempsey

Summary: A nerdy outcast secretly pays the most popular girl in school one thousand dollars to be his girlfriend.

Director: Steve Rash

Genre(s): Drama, Comedy, Romance

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 94 min

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Critic Reviews

Empire Gavin Bainbridge

Nice performances, a useful script and a dignified ending all boost this film's appeal, but it is the workable simplicity of the premise that really does it. Read full review

Time Out London Staff (Not Credited)

The director has a feel for this shopping-with-Mummy's- plastic milieu, but the theme of peer group pressure and the almost universal human need for acceptance is compromised by a script of very Californian piety. Otherwise a slight but not unenjoyable movie. Read full review

Caryn James

Can't Buy Me Love has an identity crisis that's a mirror-image of Ronald's own. He thinks he wants popularity at any price, though he's really a sincere guy. The film thinks it wants to be sincere, when all it truly wants is to be popular, just like the other kids' movies, so it sells off its originality. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

There's a moral to the new teen movie Can't Buy Me Love: Money can't buy popularity. But it seems to have been lost on the movie makers themselves. What are they doing here but trying to spend their way to audience approval, success and glory? The plot is another one-sentence gimmick, the jokes juvenile, the morality a sham. Read full review

Rita Kempley

A John Hughes movie without Pretty in Pink director John Hughes, sure makes you appreciate the teens' auteur. Frankly, Steve Rash, who directs this copycat comedy, another nerd-gets-the-cheerleader romance, isn't fit to wear Hughes' hightops. Rash only tinkers with adolescent angst, without the progenitor's empathy for his audience. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine Staff (Not Credited)

The problem with Can't Buy Me Love is that too often characters do and say things teenagers wouldn't. At times this is a funny, touching film, but more often it isn't. Read full review

Roger Ebert

Can't Buy Me Love makes American teenagers look like stupid and materialistic twits. That would be all right if the movie were aware of itself and knew what it was doing - if it were a satirical comment on our society. But this movie is as naive as the day is long. It doesn't have a thought in its head and probably no notion of the corruption at its core. Read full review

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MarcDoyle

Jul 25, 2017

Totally underrated flick - one of the more quotable movies to come out of the eighties, and it's a classic trope. No way it should be a red Metascore.

3 of 3 users found this helpful30

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