Director: Mark Waters
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tim Meadows, Tina Fey
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: I’d say that the mark of a good comedy film—the kind that stands the test of time—is that you find various lines rattling around in your head hours, even days after watching it again for the first time in several years. This is one of those films. However, regardless of how long its been since I’ve seen the movie, quotes from it march through my head with great frequency.
And it isn’t the lines that everybody says. No “fetch” or “get in loser.” Those everyone says, in the same way everyone parrots “I Love Lamp” from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy (2004) and and elongated “my wife” from Borat (2006). Same with anything said by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008). They make the film less enjoyable over time. My favorite quotes are different. I haven’t been able to get “But you love Lady Smith Black Mambazo” out of my head for longer than fifteen minutes in the day or so since I watched the movie. “You go Glen Coco” is a rallying cry in my house. Those are the lines that allow the film to live beyond the year in which it was released.
And that is the work of Tina Fey. She was at the helm of Saturday Night Live during the last sustained period in which that show was great*. She shepherded 30 Rock to be the point where it is one of the essential TV shows of my life. And she wrote this film, transforming a self-help book into the superlative teen comedy of the 2000s, so much so that I cannot readily even think of another teen comedy from those years. There is only Glen Coco.
* That would tend to sync up with the prevailing theory that most people think that show is only as good as it was when they were in high school.