Entertainment
'Never Been Kissed' Revisited: 8 Reasons It Wouldn't Work in 2013
When you take a little down time, it’s important to remember your favorite teen movies. They’re perfect for sick days, days off, and days upon days of procrastination. They’re easy to watch, you remember every cheesy line, and the high school setting helps you temporarily forget that stack of very adult bills on your kitchen table. But sometimes, it’s hard to get into a movie like Never Been Kissed when you realize how much our reality has changed in a few short years. There are more than a few things that would make this classic Drew Barrymore flick completely impossible – and that’s without considering the fact that a twentysomething would have a pretty hard time enrolling in high school without committing some serious crimes.
Without further ado, here are the modern obstacles that would make it damn near impossible for Never Been Kissed to work out like it did in 1999.
That being said, we can still enjoy the movie for what it once was: a goofy trip down Barrymore’s clumsy, lovable path through a completely impossible situation. Even with all this knowledge, we have to admit, this classic rom-com is still totally rufus.
Newspapers Can't Afford This Kind of Undercover Work
Josie (Barrymore) works at the Chicago Sun-Times, which disbanded its entire photo department not too long ago. Budgets are clearly an issue. If they were going to pay for a story about going undercover in a high school, they would opt for a freelancer and pay them per word instead of using a salaried copy editor who’d wind up costing them at least a month of important work.
And a surveillance van? Hell no.
To that point, the Sun-Times certainly wouldn’t have the budget for Josie to complete this mission with the help of a hilarious sidekick and surveillance practically living in a fully decked out van with high-tech spy devices like that James Bond-esque camera hidden in a pair of pilot’s wings that she wears everywhere.
Image: Ethan Prater
“Never Been Kissed” Isn’t Exactly Newspaper Material
After all the improbable undercover work, Josie delivers a first-person confession about how she’d never been kissed might run in the paper if the editors were desperate, but more likely than not, this silly little love letter wouldn’t merit space in the physical paper. In these trying journalistic times, she’d be more likely to find a home for that essay on unpaid blog Thought Catalog. If her piece was really, really fantastic and a bit more snarky (not schmaltzy like the one Josie winds up turning in in the movie) it might stand a chance on Jezebel. If, however, Josie had decided to go undercover in Chicago’s own hipster neighborhood and write about the “ridic” new vocab and artisanal mayonnaise stores, her piece would be right at home at a big, national paper.
Josie Would Need Facebook and Facebook is a Catfish Minefield
Any high school student entering a new school would need a Facebook in order to avoid raising red flags with her peers. But there’s more: Considering Josie’s in her mid-20s and uses her real name when she enrolls in high school, she’d probably have an existing Facebook, you know, for keeping in touch with that one girl who was nice to her in high school and stay on top of long distance family members’ life events. She’d need to at the very least temporarily disable her existing Facebook and create a new one for the new, 17-year-old Josie.
But even if she did create a high school Josie Facebook, she’d have to make sure to create an entire identity for her past life in “Bali,” including pictures of her family “herding sheep.” But thanks to the MTV phenomenon, Catfish: The TV Show, it would take her peers no time at all to figure out that she was lying about her whereabouts prior to “moving” to Chicago. Sorry, Josie Grosie.
That Alpo Prank Would Be Instant News
When the popular girls throw Alpo dog food on Leelee Sobieski's lovable mathlete and her cohorts at the prom, that story would have been the first thing Josie took to the paper. As a reporter, she’d know anti-bullying stories are an important topic in 2013 and that posting this story on the Chicago Sun-Times’ website would mean massive pickup from blogs everywhere.
If Josie Was a 20-Something Journalist, She’d Have Twitter
If Josie was really an aspiring journalist in her mid-20s committed to doing everything by the book, she’d know that social media is an essential part of promoting oneself as a writer. She’d have a Twitter. In order to do her undercover story, she’d have to be committed enough to change her handle to a new, unrecognizable name or shut her Twitter down to avoid suspicion from her classmates who, again, are prone to finding as many dirty little secrets as possible with the help of the internet. This is a big risk because she’d also have to let go of the modest following she started accumulating in her few short years in the industry.
Josie Would Have An Internet Trail
Our intrepid writer would probably have to change her name and her hair (at the very least) entirely in order to pull this off. As someone who actually is a professional writer in her mid-20s, I’ll have you know that from the time I published my first piece on a blog in college, my photo and my name have been extremely easy to Google. If Josie was studious enough to get a permanent gig at a major paper, she’d definitely have an Internet trail to cover up by the time she reached her high school mission.
Gossip Moves Way Too Fast These Days
Josie’s romance with her teacher wouldn’t have escaped the notice of the student body. (To be fair, this is probably true of Never Been Kissed’s actual time period too.) But now, gossip spreads faster. All it would take is a few Facebook statuses and tweets (maybe even a few Instagrams) from gossip kings and queens with little actual evidence to get prying helicopter parents and anxious school administrators on the case. Josie would still have that dramatic meltdown in which she finally tells Mr. Coulson (Vartan) the truth – it would just involve a much larger audience. And probably even the local TV news teams.
