Bad Girls from Valley HighEver wake up in the middle of the night and find something on the TV that wasn't what you were watching when you fell over?
That brings me to Bad Girls from Valley High.
Woke up sometime around 3 a.m. to find this 2005 gem just starting up on HBO. Was intrigued because I love me some Julie Benz and she's the star of this film. The fact that she was 33 trying to pass for 17 didn't bother me at all. I love me some Julie Benz. (Actually I just discovered she was only 28 as the movie was filmed in 2000 and languished for five years before being bounced to the DVD bargain bin).
But back to Julie. I'd marry her tomorrow.
What intrigued me even more was the presence of Aaron Paul -- Jesse from Breaking Bad. Here he played a super nebbish nerd. And he overplayed it to the hilt. He was really bad although I did get an unexpected laugh when he started a sentence with "Yo!"
I'll have to admit that I have no idea how this movie ended. I might have watched 40 minutes or so before I fell back asleep. But I saw enough.
The story was a mish-mash of Heathers, Mean Girls and Jennifer's Body with a slap dash of half a dozen teen movies and/or teen movie parodies tossed in for good measure.
It was dopey, it was vapid, it was tedious and it was moronic. But watching Jesse act like Urkel and watching the woman who would be Rita (and how I miss her on Dexter) strut around in teenager's clothes provided its own cheap amusement.
In one curious twist, the story featured a glum dude obsessing over his girlfriend's suicide (which was actually a murder). The actor playing the sad-eyed boy was Jonathan Brandis (the kid from SeaQuest and the one who played a girl in Ladybugs). The movie was filmed in 2000 and released in 2005. In 2003 he hung himself to death. So here he was in his last film role moping over a suicide and then he goes and offs himself before the movie gets released (if you count straight to DVD purgatory a release). Weird.
Would I advise anyone in their right mind to watch it? No, but it is worth maybe 15 minutes to see a little bit of Rita for Dexter fans or to catch Jesse the nerd for Breaking Bad fans at least. HBO's got it two or three more times this month. Set the DVR.