RobbieRotten
Since: Nov, 2009
10/24/2013 00:00:00
I suppose you could call me a DCOM fan as anythin that isn't flat out good is a Guilty Pleasure ...and there are more that are geuingly decent to me than I'd like to admit. Actualyl, the only Guilty pleasures I know of are the obvious ones (High School musical, Camp rock, etc).
Though for whatever reason, this film looked a tad cliche from the early promos, but conserding the utliamte premise, it seems like it could be really cool.
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Surprisingly Good
Disney Channel Original Movies are hit-or-miss affairs...and usually, they're misses (the recent Frenemies for example.) When I saw previews for Geek Charming, I was midly interested and checked it out, and ended up enjoying it alot better than I thought I would. I read the original book sometime afterward and while it was good for the most part, I have to say, Disney did most things better.
The main draw is Sarah Hyland as Dylan and Matt Prokop as Josh. The two of them have great chemistry with one another and they really manage to make their characters likeable and entertaining. The story is also good: a stereotypical Alpha Bitch and a stereotypical Hollywood Nerd meet and end up filming a documentary together, which unveils Hidden Depths about them beyond the stereotypes they portray themselves at.
The movie does two major things better than the book when it comes to the story. One: the expanded Blossom Queen festival plotline gives things a better sense of direction and ties in well with Josh's desire to present his documentary at the film festival. Two: Dylan gets together with Josh, not Amy. In the original book, Josh narrates on and on ad nauseum about how great and perfect Amy is even though he's too nervous to approach her. From the way the story is being told, the natural conclusion would be that once Josh actually gets to know Amy, he'd find that, while she's a nice girl, she isn't the perfect girl for him like he'd fantasized and that he and Dylan, whose relationship actually grows through the story, belong together. And yet...it doesn't happen, and Josh just gets together with Amy like he always dreamed of and that's that. Again, this goes against how the story's been told thusfar and is just plain bad writing, negating much of what's come before. In the movie, things are taken to the conclusion they should have in the book, with Josh realizing that he and Amy actually have no chemistry together and he and Dylan hook up.
There are some flaws with the movie, sure (Caitlin is a pointless addition, the reality show-esque camera asides get annoying, and the climax with the documentary being shown is rather weakly done), but overall, it's a good, enjoyable TV movie and definately a cut above most of what the Disney Channel puts out.