Boys and Girls [DVD]

One genre I've always steered clear of is teen films (more specifically the romance ones, as I love Mallrats and its ilk) - my sister has an unexplainable love of films such as Get Over It, which I can't stand. So all in all I must have been pretty bored when I decided to watch this film, which I came upon by chance at 4.00 in the morning while flicking through the Sky movie channels. After about 20 minutes, I realised that I quite liked this film; by the end, I knew I loved it, and was wondering what was wrong with me.

Having steered clear of the majority of such films, I didn't recognise the Ryan-actor as Freddie Prinze Jr; I did however recognise Claire Forlani as the lovely Jennifer, primarily because of her role as Brandi Svenning in Mallrats but also as the waitress in Mystery Men and the daughter in The Rock.

I think the plot is fairly generic, an image not dispelled by possibly the cheesiest name for a film in a long time. But, besides the fact that Claire Forlani is just all kinds of nice, this film somehow involves you with its characters and events, so that you feel as if you know them, and really want everything to work out.

Its not as if this is the first thing to achieve this - I personally got over-involved with Final Fantasy 8, Blackadder, Back to the Future and many others, to the point that I got depressed when bad things happened to the people in them. Its also not as if as film has to achieve this to be considered great - for example I love the Usual Suspects, but I can't feel sorry for any of them when they get hurt, or stabbed, or whatever; they're just not that involved. With Boys and Girls, you really get to know Jennifer and Ryan, and to a lesser extent their room-mates, Amy and Hunter/Steve, and the level of personalisation made me really enjoy watching it.