CAN'T HARDLY WAIT

• Starring Ethan Embry, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Charlie Korsmo Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan.
• Rated PG-13, with profanity, sexual references and teen drinking.
• Running time 96 minutes
• We give this film a rating of 5 out of 4

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle film critic

(June 12, 1998) -- The new teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait is the umpteenth version of American Graffiti: another House Party for another Dazed and Confused generation.

Only adolescents who desire a high school movie they can call their own need apply. For the rest of us, Can't Hardly Wait is a decidedly pale copy of its many predecessors.

Ethan Embry, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Charlie Korsmo are among the young stars in this tale of a high school graduation party gone bonkers.

Although teen sex kitten Hewitt (of the TV show Party of Five) is the film's drawing card, Embry (the quiet bass player in That Thing You Do!) is the actor you'll remember.

He plays Preston Meyers, the only normal guy in a yearbook full of classroom cliches. A likable sort, he's waited four years to confess his love to Amanda Beckett, the class knockout who spent those years in the arms of Mike Dexter, her arrogant, super-jock boyfriend (Peter Facinelli).

As the film opens, the Huntington Hills High graduating class is gathering for a big end-of-the-year blowout and is abuzz with big news: Mike has dumped Amanda. Perhaps Preston will get his chance.

(You have to wonder why anyone would like a girl who could spend four years with a jerk like Mike. I guess there's no accounting for teen hormones -- or writers of teen-oriented movie scripts.)

Anyway, Preston and Amanda play out their will-they-or-won't-they love story against a backdrop of familiar high school characters: jocks and geeks, slutty girls and virginal dorks, black homeboys and white wanna-be homeboys, existential weirdos, prom queens and head-bangers, all with their own struggles, dilemmas, attitude problems and silliness.

We never really get to know any of these people, or even learn enough to wish we could. The single exception is Preston, whom Embry plays with enough earnest charm and good-natured decency to suggest that both the character and the actor have bright futures.

A curious footnote: Like most adolescent films, Can't Hardly Wait has an extensive music score, crediting 48 songs. However, the film's key moments of drama are supported by songs from other generations, including Dire Straits' Romeo & Juliet, Nazareth's Love Hurts and especially Barry Manilow's Mandy.

Barry Manilow? Can't hardly wait for it to be over.