I'm not ashamed to admit I was a geek in high school, college, and am still a geek-at-heart. Back then I was too shy, too quiet, too gawky in a foreign land. My friends were always the outsiders, geeks, rebels, the Aliens of Teenage High as we'd call ourselves. Times had passed and we are now normal grown-ups. The promiscuous gay boy I knew (the first open one in my college, I recall), is now happily settled down with a lovely man. The defiant, surly girl I knew, who balked at every rule made by authority, is now a DA. Others have normal jobs, normal lives. We have no regrets, not at all. Except sometimes, for me at least, I wondered - briefly - what it would be like to be popular in high school. Would I still be who I am now?

Never Been Kissed is a movie that vicariously allowed me to live out this musings. The result? I wouldn't have it any other way. The Aliens of Teenage High were a colorful, lively bunch of people that shaped my perceptions, my thoughts, my tolerance for people out-of-the-norm... the cheerleaders and jocks didn't know what they were missing. Geeks rule. That's a fact.

Now, on to NBK. This is a wonderful movie, carried mainly by the sweet tender nature of Drew Barrymore as Josie Gellar. Josie's school life was a living hell. Overweight, not particularly hygienic, and way too brainy for her peers, she was subjected to pranks that even made me wince. Most cruel was a joke on her by her crush, resulting in a latent sense of low self-esteem in Josie ever since. But now, at 25 Josie seemed to have it made. She had cleaned up, she had a good job... she was normal. She had to be happy, and she would be if she got that reporting job she so dearly wanted. Josie was a copyeditor in the Chicago Sun-Times, the best. She spent time correcting people's English usage. It says a lot that Drew managed to make condescension charming. Anyway, by a stroke of luck she got that coveted reporting job - undercover as a high school student to get a scoop, any scoop on teenagers today.

So what if Josie was known as "Grossie Jossie" in high school right? She had learned now. She could be cool. She'd fit in. Right?

No.

She turned up that first day in a horrendous white outfit and a really ridiculous white boa. The car she borrowed from her brother blew a tire, she was late and made to wear a Sombero hat as a punishment, and it was all downhill from there. Grossie Josie was born all over again. It wasn't so bad. Josie found friends among the nerds, a group of calculus-loving bunch calling themselves The Denominators, led by Aldys. Unfortunately, the hot stories were where the popular teens were - sex, drugs, etc. - so Josie had to fit in.

Ordinarily we have all the stick stereotypical high school characters in high school - the self-absorbed pretty girls, the friendly nerds, the locker room football jocks, and that one special highschool hunk, done countless times in other teenage high-school movies. Yet NBK worked in every level. The main reason was Drew. Effervescent, bubbly, charming, yet oh-so-vulnerable, she could make me laugh or cry with the smallest of her facial and lingual gestures. A scene where she described to her colleagues and friends that she had never been kissed and her anticipation of being kissed by the right guy actually moved me to tears. She was also a valiant actress willing to look horrible to potray Josie. Three quarters of the movie she was a fashion disaster zone as well as a free-for-all accident zone. That rasta bum-slapping scene in a bar was probably an all-time-humiliaton scene for any actor, and I salute her for doing it. In was only the last half hour when she appeared in that beautiful red period gown, all luminous and lovely, that I recalled how beautiful she could be. She made Josie real. She made me care for Josie, a truly remarkable woman. Without her, I would know the script is a bit hokey at times, and that last Five Minute thing at the end was total melodrama. But no, I took it all in, I rooted for Josie, and I actually cried when the Five Minute was up. How I wished I could actually read the article Josie wrote for the CST. Drew Barrymore, you are a gem!

The other characters add color to the movie. Sam Coulson, her English Literature teacher was a sexy and affable charmer of a man. Now, I know, teacher-student relationship, especially one in high school - eeeuw. But this is no cheap tawdry sex thing. It's a relationship of two persons who understand each other better than any others. Sam was the man of poetry and magic Josie was looking for. With Josie, Sam had someone who could understand hwat he was talking about, his dreams, his insecurities. They are a perfect couple, and they both know there are lines they cannot cross because of Josie's apparent age. Their relationship was briefly shaped out in a few scenes: Josie startling him with a very good answer about the origin of the term 'pastoral', a romantic close-up of his face as he listened to Josie read out her analysis of Shakespeare's As You Like It (the disguises in that play had a lot of relevance to this movie after all), a memorable talk on a roller coaster (surprisingly tender in their exchanges), and ultimately the look of disappointment, yearning, and envy on his face as he watched Josie danced with the high school hunk on Prom Night. Mike Vartan was goldenly handsome and his easy, lazy charm reeled me in. Why couldn't my high school male teachers look like him? I'd take up English Lit then.

One magnificent final touch to this movie is the music. There is one scene when Aldys, beautiful and triumphant, as she spinned on the dancefloor with Guy the Hunk, her face vulnerable and disbelieving (The most popular guy... dancing with me?), unaware of the joke that was about to be played on her. Josie saw this, and in a brilliant touch, spinning Aldys morphed in young Josie, spinning happily in anticipation of her own prom night. And in the background there was this slow, romantic number crooning about a night to remember. It was brilliant, a scene that made me aware of the intense connection between Josie and Aldys, and Josie's determination that for Aldys, this would be a night to remember for the right reasons.

I finished this movie with a warm feeling in my heart. It was like seeing my old friends up on screen again, only this time, we won at prom night. We graduated with laughter and good memories. For my own high school prom night, twenty-six of us Aliens rented a cheap motel room. We spent all night talking, playing cards, and generally talking. We know, with dawn, we would all go our separate ways and things would never be the same again. The Brave New World out there was terrifying, merciless to us Aliens. And that night, my most vivid memory was a feeling of kinship and a wistful yearning that that night would never ever end. We survived. Josie survived. And I'm damn proud of that.

You go, Josie girl! We rebels, bookworms, geeks, the ugly, the overweight, the scrawny, the pimple-riddled, the stutterers, the shy and awkward... we will all be cheering you at the finishing line.

Rating: 92

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