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Movie Review for Love Don't Cost a Thing
Movie Review for
Love Don't Cost a Thing
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Love Don't Cost a Thing | | |
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63 Reviews total.
Release date: 12/12/2003
Run length: 101 mins.
Categories:
Comedy
,
Romance
,
Remake
,
Teen
Summary:
With his head always buried in a book or under the hood of a car, Alvin has spent the last three years of high school grinding away at his studies and working as a pool boy to earn extra cash. No doubt, Alvin’s focus has paid off: he’s finally saved enough Benjamins to finish building an engine he designed--an engine that’s going to win him a much-needed college scholarship. But while Alvin is off the charts academically…socially, he’s a big phat zero. Invisible to the “Elites,” the school’s designer label-sporting in-crowd, Alvin spends his Saturday nights playing cards with his equally dorky friends and watching home basketball games from the visitors section. It doesn’t help that Alvin is a bit of a disappointment to his father Clarence, an old school player who longs to re-live his glory days as a ladies man through his impossibly shy son. As he enters his senior year, Alvin is jonesing to kick his nerdy persona to the curb and somehow become cool enough to chill with ultra-popular students like Paris Morgan, the hottest girl in school and queen of the Elites. When Paris accidentally wrecks her mother’s Cadillac Escalade, Alvin seizes the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and engineers a plan to launch him from pariah to player. He presents her with a simple deal: in exchange for Alvin laying down the cash and fixing her mother’s car, Paris will fake a front--pretend to date him--and ensure his entrée into the ranks of the school’s elite. Desperate to get the car fixed before her mother finds out about the accident, Paris reluctantly agrees to Alvin’s plan.
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Marjorie Baumgarten
of Austin Chronicle (7/0)
Another uninspired remake of a movie that was never crying out for revisitation in the first plac...
By
Wesley Morris
of Boston Globe (7/0)
...transparent as a work of opportunistic cultural politicking.
By
Roger Ebert
of Chicago Sun-Times (6/1)
It has better values than the original, a little more poignancy, some sweetness.
By
Allison Benedikt
of Chicago Tribune (7/0)
Cannon is an uncomfortable presence on screen, both as the dorky Alvin and as his transformed sel...
By
Allison Benedikt
of Chicago Tribune (7/0)
...lame...
By
Margaret A. McGurk
of Cincinnati Enquirer (7/0)
...an entertaining and light-hearted teen romance.
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Mark Palermo
of Coast (Halifax, Nova Scotia) (6/1)
It isnt entertaining enough to get away with its minimal contributions to familiar material.
By
John J. Puccio
of DVDTown.com (7/0)
...the movie borders on cruelty to its audience.
By
Scott Brown
of Entertainment Weekly (7/0)
You realize you're watching a snuff film, where the victim isn't just teen innocence but teen rom...
By
Walter Chaw
of Film Freak Central (7/0)
Ah, true equality: not being held to a higher standard and, accordingly, producing the same kind ...
By
David Noh
of Film Journal International (7/0)
Cheaply shot and there is nothing fresh or very funny going on here.
By
James Brundage
of filmcritic.com (7/0)
it just ain't right
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Todd Gilchrist
of FilmStew.com (7/0)
As its $6.5 million take at the box office this weekend proves, even the equivalent of a bad TV m...
By
MaryAnn Johanson
of Flick Filosopher (7/0)
Shallow, fickle people doing stupid things... and those are the characters were supposed to be r...
By
Eric Lurio
of Greenwich Village Gazette (7/0)
Wait until it gets on cable.
By
Michael Rechtshaffen
of Hollywood Reporter (7/0)
The production is a haphazard rendering of the original Michael Swerdlick script that's incapable...
By
Steve Rhodes
of Internet Reviews (7/0)
With jaw-dropping beauty, Christina Milian electrifies the screen.
By
Bob Bloom
of Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN) (7/0)
For the most part, the characters and situations are stock and
cliched.
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Ernest Hardy
of L.A. Weekly (7/0)
Short on charm, purpose or laughs.
By
Kevin Thomas
of Los Angeles Times (7/0)
One of those rare films about teenagers that tries to be both sassy and sweet -- and succeeds on ...
By
Ken Hanke
of Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) (7/0)
Love may not cost a thing, but this movie'll cost you the price of a ticket -- and more of your t...
By
Jeffrey Westhoff
of Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL) (7/0)
If you remake a mediocre movie, you get another mediocre movie.
By
Tyler Hanley
of Palo Alto Weekly (7/0)
The African-American film community deserves better than a mediocre comedy pulled from the cinema...
By
Cynthia Fuchs
of PopMatters (7/0)
The predominant image that emerges from Troy Beyers' Love Don't Cost a Thing is Steve Harvey's te...
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Linda Cook
of Quad City Times (Davenport, IA) (7/0)
Here's another needless remake that's a shadow of the original.
By
Timothy Knight
of Reel.com (7/0)
Predictable hijinks ensue between the mismatched couple en route to the sappily romantic fade-out...
By
James Berardinelli
of ReelViews (7/0)
An atrociously unfunny, unromantic, and unpleasant product.
By
Jim Lane
of Sacramento News & Review (7/0)
This hip-hop flavored remake of 1987's Can't Buy Me Love is woefully botched on every level.
By
Carla Meyer
of San Francisco Chronicle (7/0)
...mildly entertaining...
By
Sean Axmaker
of Seattle Post-Intelligencer (7/0)
Love Don't Cost suffers from split personality...
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Nick Schager
of Slant Magazine (7/0)
Its unclear why a remake of 1987s Cant Buy Me Love was necessary.
By
Tony Toscano
of Talking Pictures (U.S.) (7/0)
Rent the original instead.
By
Dustin Putman
of TheMovieBoy.com (7/0)
Rotten to the core and misogynistic in the extreme.
By
Angel Cohn
of TV Guide's Movie Guide (7/0)
All the money in the world couldn't have saved actress-turned- filmmaker Troy Beyer's lewd, obnox...
By
Robert Koehler
of Variety (7/0)
Stuffed with attitude but just as hackneyed as the original.
By
Laura Sinagra
of Village Voice (7/0)
Since Cannon and Milian have to squash any frisson to avoid sinking into pure escort-service slea...
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Stephen Hunter
of Washington Post (7/0)
This variation certainly makes its points effectively, in what must be a more superheated milieu.
By
Daniel M. Kimmel
of Worcester Telegram & Gazette (7/0)
[I]t's hard to see any crying need to remake a film that was tacky the last time around, or to ma...
By
Dave Kehr
of New York Times (3/5) Login Required (Login Required)
There are unlearned lessons, too, including the one about the propriety of a teenage girl's enter...
By
Dave Kehr
of New York Times (3/5) Login Required (Login Required)
...Ms. Beyer's direction, apart from a few over-weighted Wellesian camera angles, is functional.
By
James Hill
of BET.com (3/4) No reference
Cannon doesn't play the new Alvin as just cool, but as a bad caricature of cool - like a White gu...
By
Tim Cogshell
of Boxoffice Magazine (3/4) No reference
It's still a simplistic teen morality play dressed in Sean John and spoken in hip-hop lingo.
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Roger Ebert
of Chicago Sun-Times (3/4) No reference
...sweet and kind of touching, and I liked it.
By
Erich Scholz
of Citysearch (3/4) No reference
This breezy remake of the 1987 film Can't Buy Me Love is so lightweight it threatens to float off...
By
Michael Booth
of Denver Post (3/4) No reference
This teen ugly-duckling comedy can't rise above the level of your average TV sitcom.
By
Lou Lumenick
of E! Online (3/4) No reference
Low-budget dreck.
By
Kevin Carr
of Film Threat (3/4) No reference
I found it cute. There are some rough spots, of course, but the movie has a lot of heart.
By
Guylaine Cadorette
of Hollywood.com (3/4) No reference
Love Don't Cost a Thing, an comedy inspired by the 1987 teen romance Can't Buy Me Love, demonstra...
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Liz Braun
of Jam! Movies (3/4) No reference
It involves stereotypical characters, amateurish filmmaking and a really shopworn story.
By
Josh Bell
of Las Vegas Weekly (3/4) No reference
It's a sweet story with its heart in the right place, and that's saying something for a teen movi...
By
Nell Minow
of Movie Mom at Yahoo! Movies (6/1) No reference
Awkward and unpleasant, even smarmy, particularly offensive in a movie for this age group.
By
Michael Elliott
of Movie Parables (6/1) No reference
Everything about Love Don't Cost a Thing feels familiar and stale.
By
Elizabeth Weitzman
of New York Daily News (3/4) No reference
Where the original was slight but sweet, the remake is depressingly superficial and cynical.
By
Lisa Rose
of Newark Star-Ledger (3/4) No reference
Nothing more than a cynical attempt to dress a blah story in bling-bling fashion.
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Gene Seymour
of Newsday (3/4) No reference
The direction is pedestrian and slipshod.
By
Roger Moore
of Orlando Sentinel (3/4) No reference
A charmless, Afro-centric spin on Can't Buy Me Love.
By
Ted Fry
of Seattle Times (6/1) No reference
The blandly obvious story of high-school romance and the venal, materialistic, self-involved teen...
By
Josh Larsen
of Sun Publications (Chicago, IL) (3/4) No reference
...sometimes nostalgia should remain unexplored.
By
Susan Walker
of Toronto Star (3/4) No reference
A movie as forgettable as the original.
By
Mark Collette
of Tyler Morning Telegraph (Texas) (3/4) No reference
High school films don't have to be dull or juvenile; this one suffers tremendously from the forme...
Reviews of Love Don't Cost a Thing
By
Michael Szymanski
of Zap2it.com (6/1) No reference
If you tried to be in the "in" crowd -- then this is going to be even more painful. In fact, eve...
By
James Berardinelli
of ReelViews (3/4) Not Reachable
...an atrociously unfunny, unromantic, and unpleasant product.
By
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
of St. Paul Pioneer Press (3/4) Not Reachable
This awkwardly directed version takes way too long to get where we knew it was going the whole ti...
Movie Distributors Production Companies
Alcon Entertainment
Burg/Koules
Evolution Entertainment
Reuben Cannon & Associates Movie Studios
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