The amount of cheese and camp and how corny it is now-- it's almost hard to watch the ending when they get together. JLH is so breathy and tries way too hard. She reminds me of that Twilight girl. I don't remember it being that bad when I first watched it
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I'm about to re watch it tonight after not seeing it for several years. I was 19 when I first saw it. I'm 36 now....We shall see.
Admittedly, looking back, it's kind of hard to root for Preston because he really just comes off as a stalker with a crush. It just seems like he only likes Amanda because she's the "hottest girl in school" yet isn't proactive enough to talk to her long before all of this. I always thought that Preston should've wound up w/ Denise since they have more in common.
share^^Yep.
shareSomebody on Reddit perfectly laid it out regarding how problematic Preston is with his feelings towards Amanda:
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/527j3v/cant_hardly_wait_rant/share
In 'Can't Hardly Wait,' Preston spends all four years of high school pining over Amanda Beckett. It has obviously manifested beyond the point of conventional crush because he obsesses over her an unhealthy amount. He says he's in love with her, remembers intimate details of their minimal encounters, and wrote a long love letter which is has supposedly been revised numerous times in four years. He even looks for signs in radio songs (Barry Manilow's 'Mandy') and drags his only friend (it seems) Denise to a party she doesn't want to go to just because Amanda would be there. The rate at which this obsession has grown is disturbing (if it wasn't a movie).
When he finally works up the nerve to talk to Amanda, after watching her all night, Preston literally leads with "Amanda...I love you!" Amanda reacts like any sane person would do and tells him off, very publicly, and very harshly. She completely has his number, convicts him of nearly all his creepiness and ends the encounter by telling him to get a life.
This is seriously what Preston needed to hear It was direct, honest and a complete wake-up call. His behavior is not acceptable and it is not healthy. That behavior should never be tolerated as it is typically a precursor for worse and more severe problems down the road.
I think her response was perfect- which is why the ending with them getting together kind of ruins this whole scene. Preston needed to hear the words from the girl herself to understand how cooky he has been. The message is diminished significantly by his efforts and long history of stalking paying off.
I agree somewhat but he didn´t stalk her, he had an unhealthy obsession with her.
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It just seems like he only likes Amanda because she's the "hottest girl in school" yet isn't proactive enough to talk to her long before all of this.
I don't know if a movie like Can't Hardly Wait could fly post-Not Another Teen Movie and Mean Girls. Those movies arguably killed off the '90s teen movie boom that more or less began (or was crystallized) with Clueless:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Main.GenreKiller
The "Creator/JohnHughes-style" teen movie itself suffered a backlash in [[TheNineties The '90s]], as ''Film/{{Heathers}}''' {{Deconstruction}} of many of the tropes associated with those films made it harder to take their messages and characters seriously as representative of actual teenagers. Like the teen sex comedy, [[LighterAndSofter "lighter"]] teen comedies made a comeback in the mid '90s, starting with ''Film/{{Clueless}}'' (a {{Reconstruction}} of the genre) and continuing with films like ''Film/ShesAllThat'', ''Film/CantHardlyWait'', ''Film/BringItOn'', ''Film/NeverBeenKissed'', ''Film/DriveMeCrazy'', ''Film/GetOverIt'', ''Film/WhateverItTakes'', and ''Film/TenThingsIHateAboutYou''. ''Film/NotAnotherTeenMovie'' in 2001 and ''Film/MeanGirls'' in 2004 were arguably the Genre Killers, with the former viciously parodying the tropes of the genre (as well as those of teen sex comedies) and the latter raising the bar by tackling a slew of real-life youth issues in a way that made a lot of earlier films look [[HarsherInHindsight uncomfortable in hindsight]]. While the better films from both periods are still remembered as classics, many of the other efforts, while successful in their day, are now looked back on as saccharine and unrealistic, remembered solely for '80s/'90s nostalgia.share
it's a very 90's product of its time.
shareit was pretty corny and unreal back then
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