Denis Cooverman (Paul Rust) is the valedictorian of his high school and for lack of a better word, a nerd. Feeling that graduation will be his last chance to speak his mind, during his commencement speech he insults several people and professes his love to head cheerleader Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere), despite the fact that they hardly know one another. Following the ceremony, Denis is approached by Beth and he invites her to his house for a graduation party. He is also approached by Beth's boyfriend, Kevin (Shawn Roberts), who is an angry soldier. That night, Denis and his best friend, Rich (Jack T. Carpenter), are surprised when Beth and her two friends, Cammy (Lauren London) and Treece (Lauren Storm), show up at Denis' house. Unfortunately, Kevin and his buddies do as well. Fed up with Kevin's violent behavior, Beth decides to "rescue" Denis and soon he, Rich, and the girls are running for their lives. Thus begins a night of adventure and debauchery where Denis will learn what teenaged life is really like and that Beth isn't what she appears to be.

In the promotional material for I Love You, Beth Cooper, we are told that the film is both a homage to and a satire of teenaged movies. However, I don't think that this memo made it to the makers of the film. Larry Doyle based the script on his own novel. I haven't read the book, but excerpts and reviews point to the fact that it's clever and takes a skewed look at high school life. Director Chris Columbus appears to be attempting a return to his directorial debut, Adventures in Babysitting. It's clear that their goal was to make a fun and exciting movie.

The failure of the story plays directly into the fact that the movie isn't funny. Again, my understanding is that the novel has funny descriptions of people and events, but as they play out in the movie, they simply aren't funny. The attempts at humor here are either stale or needlessly cruel. I honestly don't think that I actually laughed at all during the movie.

The real weak link here is in the casting. 28-year old Paul Rust simply ruins the movie. He isn't believable as a teenager and his awkward behavior is too over-the-top for the movie. I disliked him from the second which he appeared on-screen and this drew me out of the movie. Are you telling me that they couldn't find an actual 18-year old actor to play this role?

98% of I Love You, Beth Cooper is lazy, bad, and humorless. This point is driven home by the two positive attributes in the film. One involves a scene in which Rich is given a chance to overcome a childhood injustice. This moment is actually quite clever and shows the kind of lost potential that the movie held. The other facet is the fact that the movie failed to delve more into Beth's character. Beth is the kind of girl who does what is expected of her in high school simply because she's popular. I knew girls like this in school and this sort of lonely soul would have made a good focus for the film. Alas, this is only blip on the radar of badness in this movie.

I honestly can't tell if I Love You, Beth Cooper was made for people who loved high school or hated it. This is the kind of film where every guy is either a nerd or a jock and every girl is a slut-in-training. There's no truth to that, and seeing this portrayed in a film is just sad. I Love You, Beth Cooper begins with a boy just trying to be honest and quickly devolves into a world of platitudes and cheap jokes.

I Love You, Beth Cooper is a terrible driver on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.85:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 35 Mbps. The image here is very sharp and clear, revealing no grain and no defects from the source material. The colors look very good and the image is never overly dark or bright. The level of detail is quite good and the image has an excellent depth to it. The Disc offers a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. For a comedy, we get some nice audio here. The stereo effects are quite good and are nicely detailed. The surround sound really kicks in during the action scenes and the big party. These same action scenes provide good subwoofer effects, as does the music blaring from Kevin's Hummer.