Just what I expected

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

'Drive Me Crazy' is one of those movies where every scene transition starts with a 30 second snippet of a bad pop rock song blaring at full volume (The soundtrack is quite bad, save for the title track and "Stranded" by Plumb). There isn't an ounce of originality. Every box is checked off and you know exactly where it's going well before it gets there. That's not necessarily a fatal flaw if it can entertain (or at least divert) along the way, and 'Drive Me Crazy' does, if marginally. Most of the credit goes to stars Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier. The former has less range than a spitball, but she uses her spunky Clarissa/Sabrina thing to good effect here as a character we're supposed to like and root for, even though she's the Type-A popular go-getter. Grenier similarly could've just been "the guy" in the movie, but he brings far more to his role than was there on the page.We get a severely underdeveloped subplot with Hart's absentee Father (a third billed Stephen "Sleazeball" Collins, who is in it all of two minutes) and an out of nowhere romance between the two lead character's parents, leading to a somewhat cringeworthy finale. But it's light and bouncy, and at times even surprisingly sharp in its observations about social classes. Throw in a few chuckles and some likable performances all around and you have, not the best the genre has to offer, but certainly not the worst.

To be fair, this film is listed under the Teen Comedy genre so if you generally don't find Teen Comedies tasteful then do yourself a favor and move along. Now as I say it is a Teen Comedy, I should also say that this is a Comedy in the traditional definition of the genre, meaning that it is a Comedy that explores some thoughtful and deep themes before the Act III obligatory turn away. This is what a traditional Comedy looks like: it's life affirming, completely aware of the human body and its limits, the community is reformed where it needs to be, the society merely exists in the earthly space that creates the community (ignoring Heaven and Hell), and it turns away in Act III informed by but not obsessed by some rather ponderous thoughts on what it means to be human in its society. It's not Satire like Scream, nor is it Farce like American Pie or Not Another Teen Movie, so don't come in expecting that you're going to be laughing every few seconds.If you're familiar with the genre you know the story. Nicole (Hart) is a preppy girl in High School, aiming for the handsome jock, Brad (Carpenter), to ask her to a community dance that she's helped organize. Brad falls in love with a cheerleader from another school, leaving Nicole to make a deal with her former childhood best friend and "rebel without a cause" boy next door, Chase (Grenier), to make Brad and Chase's recent ex-girlfriend jealous. From here the plot begins to resemble a gender-swapped Pygmalion (aka. My Fair Lady) slightly as Nicole "cleans up" Chase to make the deal seem realistic. And here is where the "ponderous thoughts" begin to crop up--mostly having to deal with the social masks people wear throughout life in order to maintain some kind of status in their society.Lovely performances are given by Keri Lynn Pratt, Kris Park, and Mark Webber, who play small but well fleshed out character parts that come across as refreshingly new looks at old archetypes (the pretty girl who used to be ugly, the quietly rebellious underdog, & the geeky outcast who both wants to and doesn't want to fit in) that are truthful and never exaggerated.The film's largest weakness is with its antagonists: Alicia and Eddie, who are played by Susan May Pratt & Jordan Bridges. Jordan's Eddie is simply a jerk for the sake of being a jerk--and is hardly developed at all. Susan's performance is well nuanced, but there seems to be a deeper inner life to her character that we are never allowed to see. I feel that this is because Alicia as well as Eddie, are developed poorly compared to other more minor characters. All the characters that you are supposed to care for are developed in quite humane ways, while the two main antagonists (S.M. Pratt and Bridges) are left by the script as nearly two-dimensional stereotypes and the film never bothers to explore how or why they came to be who they are or provide motivations for what they do throughout the course of the film.Overall, the film is a simple and lovely Teen Comedy that is worth watching if you enjoy Teen Comedies and want to see a fairly decent one. It's not the best Teen Comedy of the bunch, but it is quite far from the worst one every made. I'd give it a B/B-.

i recently been watching this as in 7 times in 2 days strange yes but i just love this movie. chase is played witty and funny to watch, nicole is the goody good, they just happen to live door to each other with opposite widows lols, its fun and easy to watch they dumped and she decides to take him to the dance to avoid humiliation, he agrees and along the way they happened to fall back into love with each other. it funny because they have known each other forever, used to date till his mum got cancer and died, along the way she falls for him and then alica try's to destroy her happiness, i wish there was a second movie for this about them and there perants :)

I have had this movie for over a year, and I have watched it 5 or 6 times, the original reason I bought it was because it 4.99$ on DVD at walmart, there was really no appeal to me. I watched it and I thought it was really cute. I am not a huge fan of Melissa Joan Hart. I have never seen Adrien Grenier in another movie, so the new face was definitely refreshing even though this movie is 6 years old, I think it was cute and still modern, and it had some awesome characters. I loved the main crew. I didn't think Dolcy was very pretty, but oh well. I think Dave (designated Dave) was an awesome role. I loved how he was such a cute pushover, and I am glad he went to the prom with Di vine.:]Thanks for reading my opinion on drive me crazy, Krista!