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Review

Can't Hardly Wait takes its cue from those John Hughes films of the '80s and puts a '90s spin on it. For the most part, it succeeds. The majority of the action takes place on graduation night at what will be the biggest party of the year. Preston (Embray), an aspiring writer, attends in a last ditch effort to let Amanda (Love Hewitt) know how he feels about her. This being the exception, there is really not too much of a story line. The film is more a series of situations, some funnier than others, some not very funny at all. What the directors have captured is, in some cases, a dead-on parody of the many social cliques rampant in today's high schools -- the Trekkie/X-File loving geeks, the jocks, the gothic kids, the homeboy wannabees (hilariously imagined by Green), etc. It's hard to imagine any of these groups attending the same social gathering, but the writers seem to know this and have a lot of fun with the improbability of the situation. Ducky would no doubt approve.