Get Over It

High School teen Berke Lawrence (Ben Foster) happily reunites with his childhood sweetheart Allison (Melissa Sagemiller). Discussing fond memories of playing "doctor" and other sexual activities when they were seven, the couple now meet to neck and fondle between classes or anywhere else they can wedge their bodies. So it hits Berke's lust-filled life like a cold shower when Allison tells him his kisses just don't do it for her anymore.

Even though his friends encourage him to get over it, Berke's devastation deepens as he watches Allison take up with new-kid Striker (Shane West). Discovering Allison and Striker intend to audition for the school's production of "A Midsummer Night's Rockin' Eve," Burke makes a desperate attempt to attract Allison's attention by trying out for a bit part. His friend's sister Kelly (Kirsten Dunst), with an obvious interest in Berke, willingly offers to be his acting coach.

Meanwhile his friends try to distract Berke by dragging him to a sex club where he becomes the lucky audience volunteer brought onto stage by a team of scantily dressed women including a dominatrix. All this meets with approval from his sex talk-show host parents, who encourage their son to explore deviant sexuality, other women, and masturbation.

With an "only in the movies" sense of reality, this adolescent yarn boasting music stars Sisqo and Vitamin C as cast members, presents little or no consequences for teens drinking, raucous parties, and many sexual escapades. Nor does the script show any remorse for trying to choke laughs out of school violence with it's depictions of teens plotting revenge (including one boy threatening to kill another), using a dangerous weapon in high school resulting in injury, and a teen girl who "plays" with a crossbow and shoots a classmate. And the inclusion of a hormonally imbalanced dog becomes a running gag (in the literal sense).

With another rash of school violence making headlines as Get Over It debuts, I find the film's lack of sensitivity to these societal concerns discouraging. It reminded me of She's All That , another movie I took issue over, which released within months of the Columbine incident. Ironically, the same screenwriter wrote both titles.