To my credit, I was stinking drunk when I went to see Whatever It Takes.

You see, my girlfriend had just left for a fun-filled two week vacation to the Philippines, and it seemed that no amount of alcohol could pull my mind away from the thought of a burning China Air 747 sinking into the Pacific, its remaining passengers being gunned down quietly by communist soldiers to prevent an international incident like in that crappy James Bond flick with the newspaper mogul... except the opposite.

SPUNKY suggested a "boys night out" to occupy my mind.

Sure, what better to take one's super-paranoid mind off the fact that one's girlfriend is halfway around the planet, probably in some third-world airport being grilled by some xenophobic customs agent who hates the Western Devil than by watching a good old fashioned high school movie with lots of underage girls jumping around in tight shirts and thong underwear?

It sounded like a good idea at the time.

After agreeing to see Whatever it Takes, I have come to the horrific conclusion that I am no longer capable of making rational decisions without my girlfriend's intervention. I fear that I am destined to spend the next two weeks in an ever-sinking downward spiral of good-intentioned wrong turns that will eventually end with me picking her up at the international terminal on a purple moped with a shopping cart sidecar and an emissions problem, wearing nothing but a diving helmet and a red-latex cat suit with the words "Kiss My Grits" embroidered on the back.

Whatever it Takes bears the dubious distinction of being the very first movie in misreviews history that has managed to earn NO chainsaws. That's right. Not one.

There was no plot development, no character development, and no cinematic development. One wonders why the film was even developed at all.

As the movie begins, we meet Ryan and Maggie. Ryan and Maggie are two strapping young high school hotties who have somehow been overlooked by the rest of the student body as complete invisible nerdweeds. I don't get it. They don't even wear glasses. I mean, the chick in She's All That, I mean, now she was UGLY! A real stinker P.U. gag fest... until she took off those glasses, and then BAM she's a smokin' turbo hottie. But I digress...

Anyway, we meet Ryan and Maggie, life long neighbors and high school sweethearts. Oh, wait, no they're not sweethearts. Ryan has a crush on another girl. Oh who are they kidding, these two knuckleknobs are meant for each other.

Current Stats
Corona Extra consumed: 17 bottles
Time elapsed in film: 10 seconds
Endings figured out: 1

And it gets worse. Remember those really funny "nerdy" characters from Sixteen Candles in the '80s? Remember the ones in Can't Hardly Wait in the '90s? I feel a deep sorrow for the pre-teens of the aughties who will someday look back and remember the tenth-generation, video-dub rip-offs that this film tries to tack onto the backside of that great legacy.

There's the two or three of them that are totally generic and undistinguishable. Note I say two or three, not because of blurred vision, but because each was so completely inconsequential that I honestly can't remember how many there were now, and it's only a half-hour later.

Then there was the "ringleader" one. The one who travels around on the back of a garbage truck, always hopping off and yelling "Thanks dad." The one with the wacky Ace Ventura haircut and the dollar-store knockoff Dignan attitude.

This one is obsessed with being arrested for "mayhem." Wow, what a sub-plot. And his super-contrived plan to get himself thrown in the pokey like his statue-defacing hero is to, get this, open up the gym floor to make all the dancers tumble into the pool beneath during the Prom! Naughty naughty!

Under normal circumstances I would have put this in the spoiler lounge, but if you don't immediately think of It's a Wonderful Life and see the whole thing coming from the first second that they "establish" that there's a pool under the gym, you're probably still back at the beginning of the review puzzling over why a customs agent would be afraid of Xena.

And as if the whole Frank Capra rip-off thing wasn't enough, it was a TITANIC THEMED PROM! Ha haaa! That's right kids, it's cool when people die, as long as it was a long time ago. What's next? A Hindenberg themed prom? A holocaust themed prom?

At least with everybody falling into the pool with the styrofoam icebergs, it gave the writer a chance to put in a really hilarious gag with two promgoers rehashing Jack and Rose's now hyper-parodied dialogue almost verbatim.

But anyway, back to our lovebirds Ryan and Maggie. No wait, they weren't lovebirds, they were neighbors.

You see, Ryan is a really really nice and sensitive guy, so he wants to have a deep and meaningful relationship with Ashley, the "hottest" snobbiest, most self-centered girl in the school.

Not since that freaky looking chick with the gigantic domed forehead and the Louie Anderson teeth appeared as the sexpot catalyst to Kevin Spacey's midlife crisis in American Beauty have I seen such an outstanding example of miscasting. I mean, jeez, there are all kinds of really really hot teenage girls that would LOVE to be in a movie. Some of them can even act. But no, for some reason they picked out this bottlecap face to play the most popular girl in school.

It seems that poor Ryan is up a creek without an ugly stick. He'll never meet the hideously socially dysfunctional girl of his dreams. He'll just have to settle for wasting all of his time with his cute, intellectual, well-endowed neighbor girl.

But wait! Here comes our man Chris! Chris is a socially dysfunctional jock who knows how to get into Ashley's tight little spandex pants but for some reason doesn't want to. No, being the big asshole jock lookin' for a honeypot to dip it in, the only girl that he's interested in is Ryan's sweet, sensitive, virginal girlfriend Maggie.

No wait, sorry, not girlfriend, just platonic neighbor.

So there it is. In an uninspired two-way Cyrano de Bergerac double-dutch, the sensitive nice boy tries to hook up the self-centered guy with the sensitive nice girl with huge nubile breasts, while the self-centered guy tries to hook up the sensitive nice boy with the self-centered girl with huge nubile breasts.

You can imagine where it goes from there.

And you should. Where I imagined it went from there is much better than where it actually went from there.

Don't go to see this movie. Even drunk. Just like the alcohol, it won't take your mind off your problems. It will just make them worse.

If you think this movie had spoilers, Scooby Doo mysteries must keep you on the edge of your seat.