Butt News #24: Never Been Kissed

We Are All Josie Grossie for Thinking This Movie Was Normal!

[Hello! Did you know that I turned 41 in March? And if you thought 40 was an important birthday, well, 41 is 1 more than that!! IF YOU WANT TO GET ME SOMETHING FOR MY BIRTHDAY, MY ONLY BIRTHDAY WISH IS THAT YOU SUBSCRIBE TO BUTT NEWS USING MONEY! Especially if you are the youngest copy editor in Chicago Sun-Times history and you own your own Buick LeSabre!

As always, if you have suggestions for future movies, put them in the comments HERE.

Also, I’m STILL ON CAMEO! Just in time for… Flag Day? You should book me! I will yell at your loved one about quesadillas¹ for four and a half minutes longer than you want me to! If you booked one and I missed it, please rebook! PS Hollyweird Fun Fact: You know how the TV writers are on strike? It’s not UNRELATED to me relentlessly begging for money!]

We open at a baseball game and Drew Barrymore’s disembodied voice assures us that this is NOT a dream sequence! I… didn’t think it was?? I just got here! Sheesh! Right off the bat I’m starting to doubt my certainty that humans are better screenwriters than AIs: “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was just trying to do my job and then things happened. Well, life happened. And now I’m here.” That’s the final script? No notes?

Drew Barrymore’s disembodied voice adds that two months ago you “couldn’t have picked [her] out of a crowd,” but now—miracle of miracles—she’s at a baseball game that is NOT a dream sequence! I know a Hero’s Journey when I see one! LOL, can you imagine if you went into this movie with zero context, like you didn’t even know the title, and you tried to guess from this opening sequence why she ends up at the baseball game? YOU WOULD NOT GET IT RIGHT. Also, as someone who HAS seen this movie many times, you’re telling me this whole story happens in just TWO MONTHS!?

But we gotta start at the beginning. Drew Barrymore is Josie Geller, the youngest copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, and trigger warning for the death of print media: in this movie, which was made in 1999, Josie Geller, the youngest copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, has her own office AND AN ASSISTANT. Truly, literally, there’s no way the Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Sun-Times even has an assistant at this point!

Ugh, I can’t believe I had to live/work through the deaths of both print media AND online media and now possibly television and film too?? Can I just have a job?! Like, no offense to my beloved Butt News subscribers, but there’s no way that selling direct-to-consumer humorous movie reviews at a freelance tax rate and paying $600/month for my own insurance is a better system than being a full-time salaried staffer with benefits and a retirement plan and a cubicle I get to decorate with all my stuff! The gig economy is a cancer (which my insurance definitely does not cover!) and why are we not all in open revolt?!? Can you imagine suggesting in 1985 that instead of having multiple daily newspapers in every major city we should make readers subscribe directly to every individual writer they like? Hahahahahahah, very insane!!!

Anyway, Josie’s assistant is named Merkin and he does not respect her. He spends his work time gabbing with friends on the phone and coming up with new t-shirt slogans such as “Power is powerful,” which I would buy!! (A real WAHAM vibe!) When Josie asks Merkin for her messages he scoffs and says, “Merkin ain’t jerkin’. He’s workin’” (another perfect tee!) and Josie just retreats into her office like a small mouse. This demonstrates that Josie is fundamentally a weak and quivering jelly person who cannot even stand up to Merkin, her slave. Important character development to remember later!

Merkin says that the whole office has bad feng shui, and remember this period of the 90s when everyone was making fun of feng shui?? Who wrote this movie—my mom? Also, Merkin keeps asking everybody if he’s fat—despite being that Beeker-looking pencil boy who played a weird freak in every single 90s movie²—and can Merkin please get some time off for his severe body dysmorphia, which the paper’s robust 1990s corporate insurance probably definitely DOES cover????

Josie goes into her PRIVATE OFFICE (!!!) and is depressed. Because even though she is the youngest copy editor (WORD COP) at the Chicago Sun-Times and she loves grammar (WORD LAW) and is constantly correcting her friends and colleagues (WORD NARC), what she really wants to do is hard-hitting investigative reporter. Unfortunately as established earlier she is a dowdy marmy loser who can’t even dom Merkin. Lucky she doesn’t have much time to mope, because in comes Molly Shannon, the office slut!!!!!

Molly Shannon: “Guess who I did it with last night?’

Josie: “Roger from Op/Ed.”

Molly Shannon: “How did you know?”

Josie: “Yesterday you told me ‘I have a date with Roger from Op/Ed and I’m going to do it with him.’”

Perfect dialogue!

Then John C. Reilly comes in and he is Josie’s boss and he needs the septuplet story back by 5. Josie reminds him that she wants to be a reporter and she keeps sending him story ideas and he keeps assigning her pitches to other people, which is kind of unethical, journalism-wise! John C. Reilly says that to be a reporter Josie has to “grab the bull by the balls” and he knows for sure she has never done that because she is a noted ugly virgin.

Okay so the first problem with the premise of this movie is that Drew Barrymore is relentlessly charming, a perfect person, and OBVIOUSLY VERY BEAUTIFUL. Maybe it doesn’t work in 2023 because Josie’s “frumpy” clothes just read as cottagecore now, whereas 1999 was more about TinaKnowlesCore.

Molly’s virgin detector goes off and she asks Josie if she has any colored underwear. Then Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer comes in?????????????? And everyone acts like it’s no big deal!?!?!?? Molly just keeps bullying Josie—has she ever even KISSED anyone?

Josie’s like YES I HAVE (liar!), but explains that she’s never kissed anyone and felt that thing—“that moment when you kiss someone and everything around you becomes hazy.” Then she makes a looooooong speech about kissing (“bag of sand”-esque imo) and then Octavia Spencer goes, “Damn, girl. You are a writer.” HER DIALOGUE IS NOW 50% COMPLETE. I think she says one other thing later. Wikipedia says her character’s name is “Cynthia,” but you wouldn’t know that from watching the movie!

Remember in the 90s when it was normal to have a future Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe winner in your movie and her job was just to be the Black lady in the office who goes, “Damn, girl” to the main character??? lol but crying

Back at home, Josie finishes embroidering a pillow and shows it to her turtles, which maybe looked pathetic in 1999 but now is just basic Covid! We’ve all been there! Can the turtz get some enrichment for their enclosure, though??

Josie goes to an editorial meeting at the paper where her Big Boss, Garry Marshall, is yelling at everyone. He’s mad because he wants them to do another undercover feature pronto! And this one has to be about high school! He decided! LOL, this is not how journalism works. Go undercover into the high school and THEN find a story??? NO ONE WOULD EVER DO THAT. Anyway, whatever. Molly Shannon sucks erotically on her pencil to impress Allen Covert (her??). Garry Marshall turns to Josie.

Garry Marshall: “What’s your name?”

Josie: “J-J-Josie”

Garry Marshall: “JOSE?”

Lol. Despite not knowing her name or who she is or what she does at the paper, Garry Marshall gives Josie the undercover high school assignment because she looks the youngest in the office.

Also: WHY doesn’t he know her name???? There are only like nine people in this meeting! He doesn’t know her name?? These have to all be department heads! And THIS is what the meeting was about? Who looks the youngest? Doesn’t matter if you’re EVEN A WRITER? This is exactly how Donald Trump ran the country!

Josie convinces Molly and John C. that she’s ready for this assignment and he says, “Well I’m not holding your job for you,” which CAN’T BE LEGAL. Also, copy editor is a technical position! The paper has to have to have a copy editor, and it’s a specialized skill—it’s not like a reporter could fill in for her! So who’s the copy editor if she’s gone?? Allen Covert!?!?!??!!?

Molly Shannon says, “Oh my gosh. You get to be 17 again!” and Josie is like waaaaaaitaminute. She’s not so excited all of a sudden. Being 17 was hell for her on account of being a huge hog beast who probably eats 1000 pancakes for breakfast!

She goes to her brother David Arquette and asks to borrow his terrible car so she can fit in at high school. She can’t drive the Buick LeSabre she bought on her extravagant copy editor salary (sob!) because it’s too glamorous! David Arquette works at an inexplicably Polynesian-themed shipping store called the Tiki Hut. Josie says that he needs to go to college and play baseball but he says that it’s too late for him and his life is the Tiki Hut now. Seems like kind of a fun life, tbh! They give you the same amount of money every month? No begging?

Josie tells David Arquette about her big new assignment at work and how she gets to go back to high school and he’s like, “Do you remember what they called you in high school?” and she’s like yes, they called me Josie Grossie, and he goes, “I know. I made it up. I didn’t know it was gonna catch on like it did.” L M A O. A good joke!

More good dialogue:

David Arquette: “You look nauseous.”

Josie: “Nauseated. I look nauseated.”

Come to think of it, that’s actually where I learned that distinction! Thanks, movie!

Josie goes to the bathroom to barf and has a flashback to being bullied. Some kids pour soda in her backpack right before she tries to talk to her crush, Billy, and she doesn’t notice and then as she’s talking to Billy the soda drips out of her backpack and it looks like she’s pissing and everyone laughs. But probably high school won’t be like that this time around!

Josie gives herself a makeover and heads to her first day of creepy adult con artist school. Never has there been an uglier outfit! One of the mean girls who is not Jessica Alba goes, “Like five chickens had to die just so she could look that stupid,” and I’m sorry but I agree!

The Spanish teacher (I think?? there are only two teachers at this school so it’s confusing) makes Josie wear a big sombrero as punishment for being late. Then, just as the teacher asks Josie where she’s from, a “hot” guy comes in and Josie thinks he’s Billy and she says “Billy” out loud and the teacher’s like “you’re from BILLY?” And Josie goes, “Bali… Billy-Bali… it’s a suburb of Bali proper.” I approve of this kind of joke always. Rubber-stamp it!

The Billy guy’s name isn’t Billy, it’s Guy, and this has to be one of the weirdest casting choices of the entire 90s. THIS is the school hunk?? No offense to either party, but he looks like Thom Yorke! Even the movie seems confused about who this character is supposed to be. Is he a Christian Slater bad boy or head of the jocks? Because he wears a poet shirt and a leather jacket but he hangs out with the football idiots and dates the mean girls! Octavia Spencer would have been a better fit, tbqh!

By contrast, here comes one of the TOP (and underrated) heartthrobs of the 90s, me baby boy MICHAEL VARTAN. He’s Josie’s English teacher and really sucking at it. He can not get these kids engaged in Shakespeare, much like how the real Michael Vartan failed to fully engage the libidos of the 90s people except for me! He just never really received hype proportionate to his handsomeness, you know? Possibly because the man has the charisma of a breadstick but that’s what makes him so endearing!!!

Josie correctly defines “pastoral” and impresses Leelee Sobieski but also gets made fun of for it. Vartan cannot believe that a student knows a word.

Vartan: “Are you sure you’re 17?”

Josie: “Yes. I’m 17. I’m 17!”

In the lunch line Josie asks what’s in the cole slaw and the lunch man plonks a five-gallon tub on the table that says “KOLE SLAW FOOD.” Rubber-stamp!

Josie tries to sit with the popular girls and spills chocolate milk all over herself and then tries to do investigative reporting: “So, like, what are your guys’s hopes and dreams?” Then Guy comes over and Josie gets all flustered because he’s so hot—THIS IS A CHILD THOUGH! Guy asks her if she’s in special ed and she leaves. Good thing Garry Marshall sent this non-writer with no reporting experience in here with no assignment or guidance!

Josie goes to play field hockey and almost dies of exhaustion and that’s relatable as an adult.

Gym teacher: “If you fail gym you’re never getting into college.”

Josie: “You guys are still telling that lie?”

MORE OF THAT KIND OF ENERGY WOULD HAVE BEEN GOOD THROUGHOUT THIS MOVIE AND LESS OF THE ADULT WOMAN LUSTING OVER TEENAGE BOYS/ADULT TEACHER LUSTING OVER WOMAN HE THINKS IS A TEENAGE GIRL KIND OF ENERGY. Just a note for the inevitable reboot (that I would like to write btw)!

Josie goes outside after school and the mean kids have stolen David Arquette’s car. Leelee explains they do that to all the new kids. They decide to go get coffee and I guess just throw the car away? Sorry, David Arquette!

Leelee says she wants to be a “weekend flautist” (WHAT IS THAT) and she wants to go to Northwestern.

Josie: “I went there!”

Leelee: “What?”

Josie: “… once to use the bathroom…”

Yet another kind of wholesome and funny energy that this movie could have focused on instead!

John C. Reilly calls Josie and says he got her dumb pitch for the high school story, which was an expose on KOLE SLAW FOOD, and he says she has to do something good instead such as sex scandals or “bribery.”

Leelee invites Josie to join the Denominators, which is the school calculus team, and Josie is stoked. She can’t believe it—she finally has friends! All the biggest dorks who ever lived! Now we have a Josie friendship montage culminating in Josie leading the Denominators to victory in the math tournament, and wow! You’re really fucking these kids over, Josie! All these titles are going to be voided!

Back in Shakespeare class, Vartan is trying unsuccessfully to get the kids to care about As You Like It: “The point Shakespeare’s trying to make is when we’re in disguise we feel freer.” (Are we sure that’s the point Shakespeare’s trying to make??) Vartan tells the meatball jock that, for example, when he’s in his football uniform he’s FREE to touch other guys’ butts. Then Vartan tells a boring story about hockey, because the REAL Michael Vartan boringly loves hockey! ADORABLE.

Josie reads out loud and has a flashback to the time she performed her original love poem that she wrote about Billy: “His voice is so mellifluous/if I could just get one kiss.” DON’T READ IT! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? Sorry to victim-blame but I think I know why you were bullied!

Still in the flashback, Josie’s best friend comes running up to her in the hall and tells her that Billy is asking her to the prom because of the poem. I’m sure nothing bad will happen!

In the present day, they school announces that the prom theme will be THE MILLENNIUM. All the kids freak out and Josie is confused, so Leelee explains, “South Glen South competes every year for Best Prom.” Competes where?? WHAT CONTEST IS THAT?

Josie and Leelee drive around drinking milkshakes and listening to Free to Be You and Me and oh no I’m Josie. They pull up to a place called The Court (which is like… a park? but kind of industrial? or maybe it’s the parking lot of a store? it’s just A PLACE, okay??) where the cool kids hang out. Guy comes up to them and he and Leelee have this exchange:

Guy: “Alpo, the dog park is that way.”

Leelee: “Last I checked this was a free country.”³

Guy: “Why don’t you go home, fickle around on your calculator, and figure out how many lifetimes it’ll take you to be cool.”

Leelee and Josie flee from The Court in disgrace!

The next day John C. Reilly gets mad because another newspaper wrote about The Court (WHY!?!?!??!), and he says Josie has to become friends with the popular kids so she can hang out there and write about it, otherwise she’s fired. Did this movie not get sued by the Chicago Sun Times for slandering their newspaper?

Josie goes home and David Arquette has made a big mess in her apartment. She shows him the article about The Court and explains her very relatable pickle: she has to figure out how to underage drink with high school children or else she’ll lose her job! This is where things start to turn REALLY dark.

David Arquette (looking at the photo of the South Glen South mean girls that was printed in the newspaper for some reason): “Damn! These are high school girls? We got some underage hotties on our hands here.”

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Josie says she can’t do it—she just doesn’t know how to be popular, and David Arquette will never understand because he was ALWAYS popular! (Uh oh…) David Arquette says, “All you need is the right person, one person to think you’re cool and you’re in.” Then he muses, huh, South Glen South has a killer baseball team…

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

I wish it was literally a killer baseball team and I could be killed by it right now!

Josie gets to school the next day in a slightly better outfit and finds her coworker George hiding outside in a van doing surveillance. The paper is going to make Josie wear a hidden camera and microphone so that George, John C. Reilly, and Garry Marshall can see inside the girls’ locker room—I MEAN DO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM!

Also, LOOOOOL, can you imagine a newspaper in 2023 having the budget for a Woodstock-themed surveillance van and a full-time surveillance man? And actually, on the subject of compensation, is Josie getting paid hourly for this assignment?? Pretending to be a high school student 24/7? What’s her rate?!? Because if she just gets .50 cents a word for the finished article, Garry Marshall belongs in prison!

Speaking of prison, George looks at the girls’ asses up their skirts using Josie’s spy camera and says:

“Damn, they didn’t look that good when I went to high school!”

MOVIE, STOP!

Famously, then Josie says “Hi girlfriends!’ and falls down trying to say hi to the girlfriends.

Now she’s reading her paper about love out loud to Michael Vartan and Molly Shannon is watching the live feed back at the office and gettin’ horny.

Molly Shannon (hornily): “[John C. Reilly], have you ever been in love?”

John C. Reilly: “Love. Who knows what that is? Deadlines, circulation, now that I understand.”

Come on! I have never met a newspaperman who was not constantly trying to grossly fuck!

All the cool kids are going to see Ozomatli tonight and James Franco says “It’s gonna be Rufalicious!” (Is that his only line?????) Guy angrily corrects him that the term is RUFUS, not Rufalicious. (“Bani wei” crawled so that “Rufus” walked so that “fetch” could run.)

Josie blows off the Denominators to go see Ozomatli so she can try to ingratiate herself with the popular kids. That’s the right choice, actually! Blowing the dust off my Ozomatli CD rn!

At the Ozomatli show, Josie runs into Vartan and his girlfriend Laura who is visiting from New York. Laura says she HATES the Ozomatli show because the bathroom is disgusting and it’s too loud: “I know you love this but I hope you’re going to get it all out of your system before you move to New York.” Yes because they certainly don’t have loud clubs and gross bathrooms in New York!⁴

Lara is a huge bitch to Josie, but like don’t you think that’s a high school student of your boyfriend’s???? Why are you bullying her? And more importantly, WHY IS MERKIN THERE?

Meanwhile George has brought a girl back to the fuck van. Josie goes to sit with some Jamaicans and one of them gives her a giant brownie: “It’s a special cake a ganja cake.” George is like no no no no no! Josie is like oh boy I love cake and eats the whole thing and gets so high that she has to get up on stage with Ozomatli and do a horrible dance. As a person who has ALSO accidentally eaten a gigantic special cake ganja cake because she loves cake, THAT IS NOT WHAT WEED MAKES YOU DO.

The next day Josie wakes up feeling pretty good about her progress with the popular kids: “I think I’m totally in. I was so cool!… I made friends with a whole table of Rastafari!”

She goes to school unaware that her club stamp has transferred to her forehead and it says “LOSER” and she’s walking around and everyone is making fun of her so she runs to the bathroom and sees “LOSER” on her face and scrubs it off then throws up. John C. Reilly is just sitting and watching the the entire live feed of the vomiting.

JCR: “It’s like the All-Humiliation Network.”

That joke could have been better, no offense! “All-Humiliation Network” feels like a placeholder you put in to TK a real joke later. At the very least, how about “It’s like HBO—the Humiliated Bitch Office!” Leave your suggestions in comments! And I’m sorry, like, aren’t you guys busy? Is this why Garry Marshall is so stressed? Nobody ever does any work?

Josie has a flashback to her prom, when she went outside to meet Billy and he rides by in a limo with his real date and yells “write a poem about this, geek!” and throws eggs at her face. So much work to hurt one girl’s feelings!

Also, I’m sorry, Billy, just to be clear… you DID like the poem? You want me to write another one??

Present-day Josie runs into David Arquette who has just registered at the school so he can join the baseball team and be seen by a scout and also help Josie with her undercover reporting.

David Arquette: “This is it! This is my ninth inning!”

Josie: “But you’re 23 years old.”

David Arquette: “Yeah, with the reading comprehension of a 15-year-old!”

Good joke!

Josie’s like, “You can’t just come in here and be popular in just one day,” and then cut to the lunch room where David Arquette is winning the KOLE SLAW FOOD eating contest and the whole school is chanting ROB ROB ROB ROB ROB! (His name is Rob.)

Guy is like, “Dude, you rock, man!” and then David Arquette gets hit on by a 16-year-old and does not seem to mind.

Leelee asks Josie why she blew them off and Josie says, “Sorry, I must have forgot,” and Leelee goes, “Well maybe you should forget about sitting with us too.” Damn! That escalated fast! Maybe you are actually not that nice!

Now they’re at the carnival and Josie goes on the ferris wheel alone, but Vartan sees her so he chivalrously rides with her even though he is scared of heights. The problem with Vartan is that he’s sooooooooo handsome! However, bewitched though I am, THIS SCENE IS VERY ILLEGAL. Vartan confides in Josie about how he doesn’t want to move to New York to be with Laura.

Vartan: “You know what? I shouldn’t be talking about this stuff with you.” CORRECT.

Josie: “It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

Vartan: “Yeah, same here.”

Vartan (to a person he believes to be a high school girl): “All I can tell you is that when you’re my age guys will be lined up around the block for you.”

Josie: “You have to say that because you’re my teacher.”

Vartan (under the impression he is talking to a child): “Actually I shouldn’t say that because I’m your teacher.”

Meanwhile, David Arquette is hyping up Josie to all the cool guys and girls: “She used to date the drummer from the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies.”

Cool Girl: “Just water and Ex-Lax till prom!”

David Arquette: “Did you guys know that Josie’s dad invented that stuff? Ex-Lax? She’s like the heir to the Ex-Lax fortune.”

Now there’s a baseball montage set to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and David Arquette is killing it! Again, much like with the Denominators, you’re just VOIDING THE SEASON FOR THESE HARDWORKING KIDS.

Molly Shannon shows up at the school and Josie is like wtf are u doing here????? And Vartan (who apparently also teaches science??) is like oh are you here for the sex talk? And since this is a movie she’s like oh I guess so! Another comedic scenario that I will ALWAYS greenlight!

Molly Shannon gives an improvised sex talk pretending to be a woman named Pam Ketterman: “When you lose it to some guy named junior with bad breath in the back of a van at a Guns N Roses concert you’re gonna wish you listened to your mother.”

I guess Josie being “ugly” makes more sense when you remember that this is what your hair was supposed to look like at the time.

WHERE’S THE REAL PAM KETTERMAN? Did she run afoul of the KILLER BASEBALL TEAM?

Oh the real Pam Ketterman shows up at the door so Molly closes the blinds and keeps going. She loves doing this sex talk!

Tracy, the child dating adult man David Arquette, says she think she’s ready to have sex and Josie is like you know this one kind of penguin is monogamous and Vartan comes up behind her and she shoots him in the eye with a condom.

Tracy: “But I’m not a penguin!”

No you’re not, Tracy! Good call! This is propaganda! You do whatever kind of relationship structure you like!

Then someone’s like, “Bad news about the prom: East Glen East is gonna do Millennium too!” [RIOTING] For no reason whatsoever, Guy gets up and says, “Josie will have the answer.” Josie thinks for a second and then suggests suggests “Meant for Each other: Famous Couples Throughout History.” THE KIDS LOVE IT. Kind of a clunky theme imo but ok.⁵

Everyone is prepping for the prom. Josie and Vartan are flirting with each other while painting murals and putting paint on each other’s faces and not a single school administrator has a problem with this. Now the ENTIRE newspaper staff is watching the live feed and I ask yet again: AREN’T YOU BUSY? Think how much police brutality is popping off while these people are watching a blurry feed of a 25-year-old do finger-painting!

Josie and Vartan go through CDs for the prom playlist (is that the English teacher’s job????) and he rejects all of them and then he’s like, “here, try these” and pulls out his cool LPs. Like, for what? Who’s going to be spinning these records at the prom? You trust a sweaty 90s teenager to drop the needle on your Chris Izaak LP?

Leelee sees Josie at the mall with the popular girls and goes, “Oh my god, like, there goes another lemming.” Hey, if you’re trying to make me sympathize with that character, make her less of an annoying dork! Also, maybe it’s not actually good for adults to be friends with teenagers???? Maybe it’s actually better for Josie’s journalistic integrity that she stopped having sleepovers with this CHILD?

David Arquette is going to be the star of the baseball tournament and the college scouts are totally going to be there. Okay, but he’s only 23!! Someone would DEFINITELY RECOGNIZE HIM from being a baseball star for a different high school FIVE YEARS EARLIER!

Josie goes back to work and she has newfound confidence now that she’s a popular teenager. She even stands up to Merkin! And she tells Garry Marshall that the status of her story is “totally Rufus.” He asks to see it and she says she only has notes and he’s like, “I don’t need your notes, I need your story!” Okay, well, DID U GIVE HER A DEADLINE?

He says he needs her story in two weeks and if it’s not a hit then she AND John C. Reilly are fired. But WHYYYYYYYY??????? THIS WAS YOUR DUMB IDEA!

David Arquette throws a rager at their parents’ house and Josie tries to discourage him from having sex with Tracy.

Josie: “She’s 16 years old, Rob.”

David Arquette: “Yeah, and a gymnast.”

Josie starts to explain in greater detail why he can’t date this child but then Guy comes up and she gets all giggly and leaves with him!

David Arquette: “I’ll see you at the cell block!”

She goes upstairs to her own childhood bedroom with Guy and frantically covers all the photos of herself. Guy: “Wow. Rob’s sister is a loser.” Sorry, Josie’s room is untouched since childhood????? Gross!

Guy asks her to prom and she says yes and Guy says that that’s Rufus and it looks like they are going to kiss. JOSIE, DO NOT KISS THIS CHILD. IT IS NOT RUFUS.

Okay, she doesn’t kiss the child.

It’s one day till prom. The mean kids try to not let Leelee buy a ticket to prom so she MOCKS THEM and takes a ticket anyway.

Mean Kids: “We gotta make her dog food.” “She is going down.”

Vartan says he got Josie a meeting with the admissions guy from Dartmouth and she’s like wow, thanks! She still does not reveal that she is a creepy Orphan and/or that one SVU episode situation who has already graduated from college!

Oh, but I guess I forgot about the 28th amendment, which says that if you’re writing a newspaper story or you’re a Kindergarten Cop you’re allowed to DEFRAUD A SCHOOL and endanger all of the children’s lives!

“I’m not a creep/I’m average/I have every right to be here.”

Obviously this is a totally normal and probably cute-in-real-life man, but a movie heartthrob???

John C. Reilly tells Josie that Vartan is her real story: “It’s got it all—sex, intrigue, immorality in the education system.”

CORRECT!!!!!!! You’re supposed to be like nooooooooo except YEEEEEEES! Vartan is doing all of that! It’s very bad! HE THINKS SHE’S IN HIGH SCHOOL.

Josie doesn’t want to lose her job but she feels guilty because she loves Vartan. She shows up at Rob’s to go to prom and she’s dressed like Rosalind from As You Like It and Rob’s dressed like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Who even is the woman in Risky Business?? Is that really a famous couple from history? Has anyone actually seen Risky Business? BE HONEST.

All the popular girls came as Barbies and the nerds come as DNA and some guys are dressed as the Village People—is that a famous couple??—and Guy has a REAL SWORD as part of his Orlando costume. You can’t bring a sword into the prom! Also, DAVID ARQUETTE SHOULD NOT BE THERE IN HIS UNDERWEAR.

Tracy’s like “let’s have sex” and David Arquette, to his credit I guess?????????, is like uuuuuhhhhhhhh how about we dance some more. Oh, yeah, he’s a great guy because he doesn’t have sex with a drunk 16-year-old under false pretenses!

Vartan and the other teacher get up to announce the Prom Court. The mean girls win Prom Princesses and the popular boys plus Rob win Prom Princes and Rob is just announced as “Mr. Rob.” He doesn’t have a last name registered at the school??

Then Josie and Guy win Prom King and Queen. Meanwhile George is fucking that girl in the van again.

Now Josie has to romantically dance with a small kid. I like how everyone at this high school is ripped. That’s not what high school kids look like lol! This paper would get sued out of existence. Is this what happened to print media?:????

As they dance Guy’s like what are you thinking about and Josie says “Shakespeare” and then says a long boring quote. She asks what he’s thinking about and he says “my sword.” Hahahahahaha.

Guy’s like, “Josie, you rock my world,” and says she’s the most amazing girl that he’s ever dated. Meanwhile Vartan is staring at her SO HORNILY.

EEEEEEEWWWW!!!!!!!

Josie picks up a piece of chocolate cake and is like “is this chocolate?” OBVIOUSLY IT IS.

Vartan: “You make a really beautiful Prom Queen.” EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!!

Josie: “Thanks, so do you.”

Vartan: “Do you wanna…”

AND THEN THEY GO DANCE TOGETHER! IT’S VERY SICK!!!!!!

Guy approaches Leelee and is like let’s bury the hatchet, come dance with me, and sorry but HE looks like the nerd in this pair!!! She is so pretty!

Vartan tells Josie that he and Laura broke up and Josie is like “that’s funny because prom comes from promenade and you can’t promenade alone, can you?” CAN YOU NOT?????? Vartan: “You’re amazing, Josie Geller.”

Then Josie is like, “there’s something that I want to tell you,” and takes off her secret camera pin. She’s going to tank her journalism career for him!

Vartan: “There’s something I want to tell you too.”

This is the most damning line in the whole movie. He was going to tell her he is in love with her! 200% guaranteed that’s what he was going to tell her! What the fuck!!!! That is so crazy!

But before Vartan can commit this serious sex offense, Josie notices the mean girls opening a can of dog food to dump on Leelee for revenge torture purposes, so she heroically swats the can and it flies in the air and splats all over their Barbie costumes!

Mean Girl: “I knew it! You are a loser! You don’t deserve to be Prom Queen!”

Josie: “Let me tell you something! I don’t care about being your stupid Prom Queen. I’m 25 years old and I’m an undercover reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times [LOOOOOOOOOOOOL CAN U IMAGINE] and I’ve been beating my brains out trying to impress you people!”

Vartan walks out in a rage. What are you mad about, bro? You can legally date her now! Unless… you only liked her when YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL?

Josie continues to lecture the children about being mean to Leelee. She says that they only liked her when her brother came and also pretended to be a high school student and is currently standing there not wearing pants! David Arquette is like oopsie! Who, me? Josie says in the real world nobody cares whether you were the Prom Queen or the captain of the football team or the biggest nerd in school [gestures to Leelee literally looking like a supermodel].

After Josie’s speech she runs outside and Vartan’s like, “Oh, am I supposed to be happy that now I’m allowed to be attracted to you?” And Josie’s like, “You were attracted to me?” And Vartan says, “Goddamnit, Josie, you set me up for a story.”

In real life this guy would be like oh we get to fuck now? Great!!!!!! UNLESS!

They had a custom neon sign made for this prom? In one day?

Vartan: “Just drop the act. I mean, every word out of your mouth has been a complete lie. I don’t know you at all.”

Josie: “Look, if we could just spend some time together, you could get to know me again.”

Vartan: “I just can’t look at you the same way.” [AS WHEN YOU WERE MY UNDERAGE STUDENT]

Josie gets home and finds Rob there and he’s a huge dick to her about ruining his baseball career: “How could you do this to me? I helped you, I got you everything you wanted… You blew everything two days before the championship?” He says that the only time he’s been happy in the last five years is when he was pretending to be a teenager to play high school baseball. Damn, bro.

Things are bad on the professional front too: somehow the Chicago Sun-Times got scooped on their own story. Their rival newspaper ran a story called “Josie Geller Blows Her Cover,” lolololol BUT HOW????

JCR is so mad. Josie completely botched the assignment. But Josie taps into her newfound confidence: “We are not screwed. Yes, I made a mistake, but we will have a story, okay? You will have an amazing story.”

Josie goes back to the school in her business suit and walks into the boys’ locker room: “I suggest you cover up what you don’t want seen.” Hey, maybe tread carefully around the nude children for a while, ma’am?????

She goes into the baseball coach’s office and says she can guarantee that Big Jim Lankin and every other sports reporter in the area will cover his big game if he does her one widdle favor.

Then she sits down and writes her story, and it’s this story! The one you just heard!

Josie (voiceover): “What I ended up finding was myself, and that high school hasn’t changed.”

This is bad writing. The article is sooooooo bad! I’m not even saying that the movie is bad, but the article is BAD! And yet Josie has gone viral! ALL OF CHICAGO is reading this article about how she is a sad virgin. Except for Vartan! He’s crumpling it up and using it to wrap his hockey trophies (!?!?!!?!) so he can move to New York!

In Josie’s article she’s like PS, to a CERTAIN SPECIAL MAN, I’ve decided that I’m in love with you and if you’re in love with me too please come KISS ME AT THE HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL GAME I will be waiting there with my mouth open.

CAN YOU IMAGINE READING THIS IN THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES? Fire this woman!

It’s the day of the big game and Josie is in the dugout with Leelee and Molly.

Baseball coach: “Sweet Jesus, Geller, I had no idea there’d be this many TV crews here! You have held up your end of the bargain! Now get out there and get him!”

WHY would you think that this is what Vartan wants? More weird publicity? Also isn’t he moving????? Did he even read her article? Guess we’ll find out!

Josie: “May I have five minutes on the clock, please?” (WHY? WHAT IS THE TIMER FOR?)

All the popular kids are there cheering for Josie—they like her now??? I thought she was dog food adjacent? The whole newspaper staff is there too, even Garry Marshall: “Sun-Times readers out here en masse relating personally to one of our reporters!”

Josie stands on the pitcher’s mound and waits for Vartan. The popular kids made a big sign that says “JOSIE!” OK BUT WHAT IF HE DOESN’T COME. LITERALLY WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS STUNT?

Now there’s only 17 seconds left for… Michael Vartan to pop out of a mole hole and be like yes I love you??????

This is not human behavior in any way.

Now all the popular kids are yelling the countdown numbers. But why are you counting it down like it’s good???? If you’re there to support her?!?!?!?! Isn’t it bad when the numbers run out?

ALSO, from a storytelling perspective, why not make the central sport of the movie hockey if you’re going to have all this other hockey stuff? It’s Chicago! It gets cold there! Vartan could skate out there in his Gordie Howe helmet and do a whole callback to a scene I didn’t bother to mention earlier!

Anyway, Vartan doesn’t show up and the crowd is so disappointed. YEAH BECAUSE THIS IS AN INSANE WAY TO DO THIS.

But then there he is!

And Josie has her first kiss in front of a whole stadium of people.

Vartan: “Sorry I’m late. It took me forever to get here.”

Josie: “I know what you mean.”

Then everyone in the stands kisses too, and then we see that David Arquette is the new assistant coach. Okay, but, assistant high school baseball coach is not as good a career as professional baseball player! You could still go to college, buddy! You just have to try doing it in any way other than the one you picked!

David Arquette’s like, “All right, let’s play ball, kids!” and they start the championship game!

HEY SORRY THEY DON’T GET TO GO TO THE CHAMPIONSHIPS IF THEY HAD A 23-YEAR OLD-PLAYING ON THEIR TEAM ALL YEAR. ARREST EVERYONE.

1. STOP stereotyping quesadillas as a CHILD’S FOOD! QUESADILLAS ARE FOR ALL PEOPLE!

2. He’s also the guy who couldn’t say “Aaron Burr” because he didn’t have any milk!!!!! In the very first Got Milk commercial! Directed by Michael Bay! Iconic! Living history! Put Merkin in a museum!

3. Nerds gotta stop saying this. It never helps.

4. New York City: “Rat in the toilet? Boo hoo, princess! Here the rat IS THE TOILET!”

5. Garfield High School and/or Washington Middle School graduates: I’m having a flashback of a school dance with the theme “That’s Just the Way Life Goes.” Did that actually happen? What was our actual class of 2000 prom theme?? The special cake ganja cake erased my whole memory!