We’ve made it, my dear Enemaniacs. It’s the final week of Melissa Joan Hart Month at B-Movie Enema. And this is the headliner for sure.

1999’s Drive Me Crazy has a bit of a story behind it. Very clearly, this was Melissa Joan Hart’s movie. It was released by 20th Century Fox, but with 90s teen movies doing pretty well, and she doing pretty well on ABC’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, it was impossible to think there wouldn’t at least be an attempt to get her into a movie. In a way, this was accomplished the year before when she made a brief, near cameo appearance in one of the most beloved cult classic teen flicks of the 90s, Can’t Hardly Wait. That was less an attempt to get her onto the big screen and more of a “Hey, we’ve got every young up-and-coming actor in this movie, and the Kid from Dick Tracy, so… Get the teenage witch girl!” thing.

No, Drive Me Crazy was specifically for Melissa to spread her wings a bit and give the movie thing a real try. While the movie had its struggles with critics, it wasn’t that big of a flop when it came to the box office. It cost about $8.5 million and brought in nearly $23 million. Not too bad in terms of the teen movies of the era. While nowhere near the box office darling as 1995’s Clueless or 1999’s She’s All That, Drive Me Crazy turned a profit where Can’t Hardly Wait and Empire Records, both beloved cult films, did not.

I think the problems came with the reviews, and one other very big confusion for audiences that came in the form of Britney Spears.

So, the origin of Drive Me Crazy was the book How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser. What’s kind of strange is that this was the second book of a trilogy. How I Changed My Life and How I Spent My Last Night On Earth were not adapted, nor, I don’t believe, were ever considered to be adapted. Even stranger, Strasser was not exactly a teeny bopper writer. He wrote some pretty heavy shit. He wrote about nuclear war, Nazism, school shootings, and school bullies. I guess, in some ways, you can kind of see some of those deeper themes in this movie about how people drift apart due to maturing or cliques or hormones. There are certainly ideas around conforming to a certain aesthetic to become popular present in the movie, but it’s kind of a strange thing to take as your basis for this movie that was not really designed to overly explore deeper themes.

However, when the movie was originally written and shot, it was under the title of Next to You. Admittedly, that sounds like a movie that stars Blake Lively that randomly shows up on Netflix one day with a lot of very schmaltzy romance junk in it. But that original title actually makes much, much better sense than the Drive Me Crazy title and actually does have an element of truth to the physical proximity the main characters share in the movie. The writer was Rob Thomas, not the Matchbox Twenty guy, but the guy who has done some really good stuff. He created the excellent iZombie and Veronica Mars series. He also wrote for Dawson’s Creek. Thomas does good work, and I can see how he might have been into Strasser’s writings.

I mentioned a name earlier in this preamble… Britney Spears. This is where things may have created some confusion for younger audiences and showed some unfortunate meddling by 20th Century Fox. At the time this movie was in production, Spears was coming on strong as a pop star. She had a song called “(You Drive Me) Crazy” which appeared on her debut album. The album hit stores in very early 1999 and was destroying the charts, largely thanks to the title track “…Baby One More Time,” which featured catchy pop lyrics and a lot of jailbait imagery in the video. What people don’t realize is that the song was out as a single in September 1998, more than three months before the album was released. So there was this long lead-up to the release of her album and a lot of energy behind Britney Spears becoming the next major pop idol.

Because of this, 20th Century Fox decided to change the title of Melissa Joan Hart’s first major film to Drive Me Crazy. Fox probably thought this would be able to ride the wave of Spears’ fame and popularity. Melissa was not a fan of the idea. For one, she wasn’t sure if Spears would be a long-lasting force in pop. Hell, things can change so fast in pop music, it’s possible Spears would become a one-hit wonder. I mean, we know now in the future that she didn’t, but at that time, it was hard to say. For two, this was tying someone who had a little longer legs (funny for one so short) as a popular entertainer, even going back to Melissa’s days as Clarissa, to someone else.

This was supposed to be Melissa Joan Hart’s big breakout on screen. Yet… It’s named after a Britney Spears song. 20th Century Fox seemed to have confidence in giving Melissa a starring role in a movie at one point. It seems kinda crappy to shift that by changing the name of the movie and needing to rely on Spears to sell this movie. What’s more, is that it isn’t that good of a title based on the movie’s plot and themes. That’s not even considering that Britney Spears is not in this movie. Additionally, the song, while present in the song, doesn’t exactly fit the rest of the movie’s soundtrack. I dunno… Kinda leaves a bad taste if you ask me.

What didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth was what was going on between 1998 and 1999. Mel was blowing up. Sabrina was popular on ABC’s TGIF. Melissa appeared in Can’t Hardly Wait. To help her spread her name, help get more appeal for her from a male audience, and sell Drive Me Crazy, I was in heaven when Mel started popping up in magazines that DEFINITELY appealed to a 22-year-old dude. Yes, this was when she appeared in a bikini in the pages of Bikini Magazine and then in lingerie in Maxim.

I fainted the moment I saw these magazines upon their release.

Yes, I was a 22-year-old dude who was waaaay too into an actress I watched every Friday night. But holy hot damn, this was the good stuff. Yes, I bought the magazines. I read the articles several times. I’m being serious. I didn’t just look at the pictures; I wanted to read what she had to say too. I was in love, dammit! But seriously, this was great for Geoff, but, sadly, I think this was not so good for Melissa. I’ll talk a little more about this in the wrap-up, but even before Drive Me Crazy was released, Melissa was in very hot water for looking very hot in lingerie and swimwear.

The sultry, mature photoshoots very nearly kneecapped her entire career. Archie Comics nearly sued Melissa for breach of contract over how she presented herself while playing their fairly innocent and kid-friendly character. She also faced backlash for her choice to appear in the mature men’s magazines from others not even related to ABC or Archie Comics. She was 23 years old at the time and was not allowed to express her adult sensuality. This was 1999. While in a different century, it wasn’t all that long ago to realize that women would be shamed for showing a little sex appeal. She was more or less forced back into appearances, wearing clothing that 16-year-old girls would wear to premieres and public appearances.

According to a Fox News interview with Hart, she was approached by Playboy for a photoshoot. Now… Lemme tell you this. I had a Playboy subscription. If one arrived with Melissa on the cover/inside the magazine, I would not exist today. However, as a little more mature person now, I think she probably did the right thing to turn down the offer. While several actresses appeared in Hef’s world-famous magazine over the decades, not all of them saw actual good returns for their careers afterwards. If she had a huge career, and opted to do something for the magazine in her 30s or early 40s, that would have been a different story, but at the time they likely approached her, that might have been a bad move. Don’t get me wrong… It would have been GREAT for me, but I think she went the right direction by doing sexy, but still implied, photoshoots instead of actual nude shoots.

But enough of this! I’ll have some words at the end of this review to wrap up the whole month and the trip down memory lane. For now, let’s walk the halls of Time Zone High School and talk about Drive Me Crazy.

MJH plays Nicole Maris. Nicole is in the in-crowd at Timothy Zonin (Time Zone) High. Nicole is hot for the star basketball player, Brad (yes this is the second movie of Melissa Joan Hart Month that featured a character of hers being hot for a Brad). Nicole is a very focused person. She’s working on the school’s big Centennial Dance. She stayed up all night to build a model of what she envisions for the dance, even including little figurines for guests. When she sets her mind to something, she goes overboard and works herself into a frantic and excitable state – including staying up all night to work on this project. Additionally, she needs to do an interview about the Centennial Dance at school. She wants to wear a red halter top that her mother owns for the interview. She hopes Brad will notice that and ask her to the dance.

Next door, we meet Chase Hammond…

Chase is played by Adrian Grenier, who was also on a bit of a trajectory. After this movie, he’d go on to appear in the John Waters dark comedy Cecil B. Demented, then Harvard Man, a thriller that I quite liked, opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar and Joey Lauren Adams, before hitting it big on HBO’s Entourage. For the first decade and a half of the 21st century, this guy was showing up all over the place. He would go on to become a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for some of his philanthropic activities around sustainability and other environmental causes.

Anyway, Chase is maybe not quite as ambitious as the actor playing him. He’s a bit of a slacker. It’s also implied that he’s a stoner or gets up to some drinking and what have you (the latter definitely more apparent later than the former). Anyway, we will learn throughout the course of the movie that Chase and Nicole not only live next door to each other, but they used to be really close when they were growing up. However, a very specific event pulled these two neighbors and best friends apart. Now, they hardly acknowledge each other and even maybe go so far as to pretend they never really knew each other.

Chase, along with his friends, Ray and Dave (played by Mark Webber, who would go on to be Stephen Stills in one of the greatest comic book adaptations ever, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), set up a prank for lunch. Most of the kids eat outside, and Chase, frustrated with the status quo and the “herd mentality of sheep,” decides to introduce some powdered orange stuff into the sprinkler system. It covers the popular kids as well as paints the grass orange.

The principal might not have been too pleased with the three guys’ prank, but Chase’s girlfriend, Dulcie? Well… That wasn’t the sprinkler that caused her to be a little gooey. Dulcie’s played by Ali Larter, one of the sexier young actors of that era. She’s kind of the perfect not-so-good girl. That’s kind of exactly what she’s playing here. 1999 was her breakout year with roles in Varsity Blues, House on Haunted Hill, and Drive Me Crazy. Then, she rolled that over into the 2000s with the co-lead of Final Destination before going into movies like Legally Blonde, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and multiple appearances as Claire in the Resident Evil series. By 2006, she was one of the key characters in NBC’s Heroes.

As for her role as Dulcie, she is, like Chase, tired of the status quo and fighting to be like all the others in the in-crowd. She is a little more high-minded, though, than Chase. Chase acts out due to personal frustration. Dulcie wants to fight the system as a whole and blames her frustrations on bigger concepts that annoy her.

After school, Nicole is waiting to meet her dad to do their usual meet-up since he and her mother got divorced. She sees Brad walking by and talks to him. He comments on how pretty she looked during the morning announcements, talking about the dance. She thinks he’s about to ask her to the dance when he simply asks her to go to the shoe store so he can pick up some new kicks for that night’s game. She can’t go because of her dad meeting her. He won’t stay because, you know… her dad. It’s another missed opportunity, and a tad of an awkward one because, if I’m being honest… Brad’s kind of a lunkhead. He’s not exactly all that good-looking either. She could do better. I mean, I’m not jealous or nothin’. Just stating facts, okay?

However, at the game, she talks about her frustrations with getting Brad to ask her to the dance to her best friend, Alicia. Alicia’s kind of that super cool chick that uses big words and snark. She’s kind of an asshole, but this is kind of a trope of the 90s. You had the overly eager go-getter like Nicole, the kind of snarky asshole, Alicia, who also speaks in a lot of newspaper headline type talk. Nicole’s other friends are also classic 90s tropes – the random black girlfriend (whose name I don’t think is mentioned in this, and if it is, it’s by accident), the gay guy who hangs out with all the girls, and the overly sweet other blonde who isn’t Nicole.

Anyway, Brad uses Dave to ask Alicia if Nicole would be interested in going to the dance with Brad. You know, normal high school stuff with proxies and what have you. Things seem to be looking up for Nicole, even though it looks like Brad took a tumble during the game and landed on top of a rival school’s girlfriend (this is called foreshadowing), and might be a little shaken up. Meanwhile, Dulcie is quite interested in hearing about some stuff from the head of the local college’s chapter of ALF (Animal Liberation Front – Chase does make sure to comment on the silliness that the org is named ALF because… you know, ALF the TV show alien?). Chase isn’t interested in this kind of rebellion and wants to leave, but Dulcie is more interested in this guy’s spiel (this is also foreshadowing, but plays out much quicker). When Dulcie wants to go to the ALF meeting the following night, Chase says he’s not interested, so she breaks up with him.

Brad is pretty depressed over the breakup. So much so, even Nicole recognizes he’s in a pretty bad way. But in a turn of events that started at the basketball game last week, Nicole is headed for her own depressing disappointment. Alicia delivers the news, “Adonis Jock Falls Hard for Rival Spirit Head.” Despite the cheerleader being from a rival school, Brad is taking her to the dance Nicole is planning.

Nicole and Brad both get drunk individually at the party. They both end up in the backseat of Dave’s car in his role as “Designated Dave,” a role Chase hates because he thinks Dave tries too hard to be liked by the in-crowd. Anyway, Chase, along with Dave and Ray, witnesses Nicole drunkenly berate Brad for not “following the rules” of how to ask a girl out to the dance. Chase isn’t all that cold-hearted, though. He offers to help sneak Nicole back in so her mom doesn’t see her in this state. This gets Nicole thinking about how maybe there’s a perfect 80s-90s teen movie plot just waiting to blossom here.

Nicole calls Chase and asks him to take her to the dance. She figures he might be a bit intrigued. She knows he got dumped by Dulcie. They both could use a little bit of recovery from the embarrassment of everyone knowing they got unceremoniously tossed aside by their separate objects of affection. In fact, she argues they could save each other from disgrace. When Chase asks what’s in it for him, Nicole gives him this look…

…I’m in. I am 100% in. Whatever she wants. I’ll do it. Count me the fuck in.

*Ahem*

Anyway, Nicole offers that this is Chase’s chance to win back Dulcie. However, maybe this is also a way to make her old friend relevant and popular. Isn’t that what it’s all about? School is only about status and popularity. If you have neither, you’re a loser and will always be a loser for the rest of your life. That might explain a thing or two about me and how people probably view me, but, hey… I get it. High school is life. You never escape it. No matter if you’re 30 years removed from it. You must live your life based on the role assigned to you on the first day of ninth grade. Period.

*Ahem*

Nicole was drunk, but she had an idea that might just save these two broken-hearted fools some torment. Borrowing a page from many romantic comedies over the decades, they will simply pretend to be a couple. Nicole will have a new boy toy, and Chase will make Dulcie jealous and want to get Chase back. To do this to the extent that makes sense for both of the end goals to work, they need to give Chase a makeover. He needs to look like the jocks and other cool kids. He needs to fit in. This will drive Dulcie nuts to see her rebellious former beau fall in line with the rest of the sheep. It will also look right with Nicole and her friends. Since Chase is fairly dope, he will be so damn cool that maybe, just maybe, Brad will realize the error of his ways. They both make the pact that they cannot do this half-assed. They have to go full ass.

This movie is kind of a crazy time capsule of a thing… Chase is wearing a t-shirt and kind of baggy pants. Today, he’d be really cool. Okay, so his shirt looks dirty. But the entire skater vibe wasn’t exactly uncool back in 1999. Nicole, meanwhile, looks kind of overly nerdy in this scene. She looks way better the next day at school in that totally 90s drab green shirt and khaki colored skirt, but Chase starts from a look at, a quarter century later, is kind of the standard for cool.

I know this is kind of the point that it’s not the haircut or clothes that make the man/person. And I know there is something to be said about dressing in a way that is a little better than utilitarian or comfortable, but still… It kind of makes me laugh a little bit that there’s been a bit of a horseshoe effect that brought this around to what Chase looked like before is kind of a facet of what it would be to come off as cool now.

I guess the best way to describe this makeover is a bit of a reverse Grease. In that, you have the good girl Sandy in love with the greaser Danny. At the end, you have Sandy get a makeover to fit more in with what would look more like a fit with Danny. Now, I honestly think that wasn’t necessary. Those two were already in love. So what if they don’t exactly look like a pair? Anyway, I have lots of problems with Grease, significantly more issues than I do with Drive Me Crazy (hot take, I know), so let’s catch back up here. I’ll come back around with what I think this movie has under the hood that makes this movie a bit of a sleeper in terms of an interesting teen/young adult rom-com.

After a thrilling basketball game in which Brad sinks a shot at the buzzer to win the game, maybe this deal isn’t entirely a scam. Nicole and Chase seem to enjoy spending time together, even if it’s built on false pretenses. Chase is able to debate another jock about how much he hates the Designated Hitter in baseball. Chase also shows his true colors as a considerate guy when he asks Nicole if she wants anything from the concession stand. Nicole shows off her love of REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Loving You,” which gets noticed by a classmate who asks Nicole the next day if they are a couple. So, not everything about this is begrudging when they go out together, and they definitely are turning the heads of the people around them.

Nicole finally meets up with her father after he stood her up a couple of weeks back. He’s played by Stephen Collins. That’s the dad from 7th Heaven and the new Captain of the Enterprise, Deckard, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He is famous for nothing else. Don’t Google him. Just trust me. He is famous for nothing else. This reveals that not everything is perfect in Nicole’s life. He tries giving her the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to try to explain his issues. She tosses it out of the hot air balloon they are riding around in. He then tries to talk her into going to a big ballooning festival in Rio, but he doesn’t have enough insight into Nicole’s life to see that she’s got her own interests and things she works hard for.

Chase gets beef from Dave and Ray about how much he’s changed. They want him to go see a band that Ray wants Nicole to pick to play at the dance, but he has plans with Nicole. They think he’s being scammed because he has to put in all that icky relationship shit and getting none of that sweet, sweet benefit of being in a relationship. However, Chase gets pretty pissed off when people in Nicole’s circle make fun of Dave for his love of The X-Files. He tells Nicole that his being called as the designated driver for all these jerkasses saved their lives, but they just make fun of him. He even reminds her that Dave got a single Valentine’s Day card back in the fifth grade, and it was from Nicole, proving that she had a heart of gold and never wanted anyone to feel left out or bad, even if some of her friends now are more than happy to exclude people in the out group.

Similarly, when Chase brings Nicole to his normal hangout, The Pit, to see The Electrocutes (in the real world, they were The Donnas) play and meet up with Ray and Dave, she catches some strays from his friends. Chase soon discovers that Ray has a little bit of a thing for Nicole because he previously approached her to ask her to go to the dance before he learned about her deal with Chase, and he wants to dance with her at The Pit. But you know what, it’s not exactly his fault, you know? Chase said all this stuff with Nicole was just a scam. So who can blame the guy? Ray’s smitten by a cutie.

When Chase runs into Dulcie at The Pit, who is there with the ALF douche from earlier, Nicole decides to slide over to plant a kiss on Chase. Nicole’s friends start to think that she really is in love with Chase because they do look good together. This is music to Alicia’s ears as she begins to put some of her own machinations into motion. It starts with her seemingly making a play for Brad to keep her in mind for a rebound if things go south with what’s her face from wherever that is. Nicole’s mom, on the other hand, isn’t so sure that her going out with Chase is such a good idea (this is, yet again, foreshadowing).

As a side note, Nicole’s mom is played by Faye Grant, who you can definitely Google, and is best known for being in the awesome 80s miniseries V.

There’s a little exchange I always kind of forget about, but I think it’s a really good scene and kind of helps drive a little bit of a point home, for better or worse. At an outing with all the cool people, Chase talks to one of Nicole’s friends that he’s gone to school with since elementary school. He refers to her as “Bo” when she really goes by “Dee,” or at least now she does. Her last name is Vine. She explains that back when he remembered her being called “Bo,” she was 40 pounds overweight. Kids called her that until she dropped the weight, got contacts, dyed her hair blonde, and just kind of giggles at stuff. That has elevated her to being Miss Time Zone at all the dances.

She tells Chase all this stuff because she says they are “kindred.” She thinks he’s kind of going through the same stuff she did to get into this position she’s in now. This can be read in two ways. One, she thinks of herself as a sort of interloper into this cool kid world. She’s not called fat or dorky or whatever anymore. Chase is also interloping into this world that he’s not native to as well. So she might be thinking he’s changing to avoid being an outsider. Two, she could see right through this and knows this is all manufactured. Either way, Chase doesn’t exactly react positively to what she says. They both admit that they aren’t entirely sure they are happier in this world. Dee says that at least she knew who really cared about her back then.

When they get home, Nicole reveals how sorry she is about their falling out back in middle school. Chase’s mom got sick and died of cancer. Seeing her that way and the struggle the Hammonds were going through caused Nicole to be so sad that she pulled away. Then, as he began to act out over the grief he had, the only thing she knew how to do was to pretend she never knew him, and that created the rift. She apologizes for not being there for him when he needed his best friend the most. He tells her that he’s over it now, revealing what they both already kind of know to be the case – they really are falling for each other.

One day at school, Dulcie and Nicole end up as lab partners. They hurl snide remarks back and forth until the real shit lands. Dulcie comments how disappointed she was that Chase didn’t want to get involved with the ALF douche. Nicole says that she must not know anything about Chase’s mother. Maybe Chase isn’t interested in protesting animal testing because his mother might have benefited from those tests. Ever think of that, biiiiiitch?

Dulcie suddenly gets a brand new outlook on Chase, or at least she kind of maybe regrets dumping him. Later that night, Chase and Nicole make an appearance at Brad’s kegger. Nicole says they are in the home stretch now. They don’t have to make any more agreed-upon appearances before attending the dance together. Chase asks if Nicole said anything to Dulcie during science class because she has been different around him. Nicole says that’s good because that means they have nearly accomplished their mission.

But you know what is also going on? It’s now the third act, and it’s time for the obligatory “third act breakup.” So here’s how it is all going to go down. Back on that day out with all the cool kids, Alicia told the cheerleader from the other school that Brad’s parents were part of a doomsday cult, leading to that girl, Kathy, breaking up with Brad over a difference in beliefs. At first, you think Alicia is making a play for Brad. Well, at first, she might have, but what she was doing was a convoluted plot to make it so that while Nicole is waiting for the bathroom and Chase is getting a drink, Brad and Alicia could approach each of them. Brad talking to Nicole gets Chase a little hot and bothered. Being a bit tipsy on tequila also makes him a little slow to pick up on Alicia preying upon him. She says that Brad is back on the market, so Nicole is going back to Plan A. If not for Brad falling into the arms of that cheerleader, Nicole would have gotten what she wanted…

And so, too, would Alicia have gotten what she wanted…

So Alicia has manipulated things to get Nicole to witness Chase kissing her, breaking them up. Just as Brad and Nicole are talking about how maybe love is for dopes, like she said to him while she was drunk the night she found out he was with the cheerleader. Nicole locks herself in the bathroom to have a good cry. When she’s done, she goes after Alicia, who claims she was testing Chase. Nicole says she’s just a miserable little bitch. Ray and Dave pick up a puking, near-blackout drunk Chase. Ray stays at the party with his camcorder for a project he’s working on while Dave drives him home.

In the car, Chase and Dave have an argument about wanting to be liked by the people in the cool kids club. Chase says that these types of people at the party aren’t worth liking him. Chase walks home while Dave goes back to pick up Dee and her boyfriend, who is basically sexually assaulting her. When he starts talking about how fat she used to be and how she would be nothing without lucking into a case of bulimia, Dave kicks the guy out of his car. When the guy starts kicking Dave’s ass, Dee pepper-sprays him, and they get out of there.

At school, Ray has a surprise for everyone. He’s been recording and editing a bunch of footage of the popular kids to make fun of them. He slips it into the morning announcements, comparing them to animals, making fools of them, showing them to be cruel, and even going so far as comparing their pep rallies to Nazi rallies. Nicole defends Ray’s talents as an editor to some of the people in the school who are pissed at him, and basically jettisons her former friend group. Chase has Dulcie back, only because Nicole won’t answer his calls. She even turned Brad down when he asked her to the dance, the one thing she wanted all along. Everyone’s pretty damn bummed out.

There is one character who is looking forward to the dance. In the most visually interesting scene, Dave and Chase talk about their immediate futures in front of funhouse mirrors at a carnival. Dave considers going to college on the East Coast, where someone doesn’t know him as “Designated Dave.” But, more importantly, he’s been asked to the Centennial Dance. Throughout the movie, he references a girl he talks to online who is into all the same stuff he’s into. She’s finally agreed to meet him in person and wants him to pick her up right before the dance. Chase is not planning to go to the dance after all. Instead, he’s going to The Pit with Dulcie. At the last minute, Nicole calls Ray to take him up on his original offer to take her to the dance so she doesn’t have to go alone.

On the way to The Pit, Chase and Dulcie don’t have anything to say to each other. As they walk into the hangout, Chase realizes he is not so into the idea of being with her anymore. In a scene between two actors who are going to be pretty damn big pretty damn soon, they wordlessly break up with each other, and it is a hell of a job by both of them.

Nicole’s father even puts aside his hot air balloon festival to be there at Nicole’s dance. He learns from Ray that she put it all together. As Dee is introduced to make a special presentation as Miss Time Zone, it’s revealed that she’s the girl Dave has been having an online relationship with all along. When the sculpture is revealed, Chase is there to meet back up with Nicole. She tells Ray she’s had a really great time, and he says that makes what he has to do that much more difficult and walks away from her so Chase can reunite with Nicole, and everything works out while The Electrocutes do a cover of “Keep on Loving You.”

Oh and also, Nicole’s mom and Chase’s dad have been dating all along without their kids knowing.

There are a lot of really good elements to this movie that I think got overlooked. Largely, I’d say this movie got forgotten over the years. It’s hard to argue that movies like She’s All That and Can’t Hardly Wait had deeper hooks, repeatable lines, memorable characters, and slightly better end results. You can’t tell me you don’t think of She’s All That whenever an already pretty girl takes off her glasses and, somehow, gets instantly even more attractive to everyone in the room. I also refuse to believe Seth Green’s character from Can’t Hardly Wait doesn’t live rent-free in all our heads.

Still, there are a lot of parts here that I think are very good. At the very top is some pretty good chemistry between Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier. But I think Adrian Grenier has one of the greatest performances of the 90s in one of these teen rom-coms as Chase. There’s no way that he exudes superstardom in every scene of this movie. Ali Larter is also very good. I commented on their final scene where they wordlessly break up. That is almost too good for any movie from this genre that isn’t made by a John Hughes type. For Hart and Grenier, they have a fantastic climactic moment at the dance that is a really good, if not kind of schmaltzy, volley of lines. When Nicole asks Chase who they are making jealous tonight, he responds, “Everyone, Nicole… everyone.” That’s good stuff that really lands the fairy tale element of the whole plot. It’s a great end for a couple of characters you grew to root for.

This movie has elements about identity too, especially how it pertains to kids who are struggling with being comfortable with themselves. Yes, in some ways, this does follow the She’s All That concept of turning someone who no one really notices into someone that everyone thinks is the hot shit. It’s got the Romeo and Juliet concept that Grease had with people from different backgrounds or sides of the tracks who fall in love. It covers concepts of what having the right boyfriend could mean to a girl in the in-crowd because it means a lot to her status in the dog-eat-dog world of high school. Arguably, Can’t Hardly Wait is slightly better at driving home the point that a girl could end up losing their own identity when hooked up with that perfect high school Adonis, but I think a lot of these movies in the late 90s did well with the whole identity concept.

Even further on that identity idea, the whole reason why Nicole and Chase were no longer friends at the start of the movie is that something happened to Chase that neither he nor Nicole could really personally handle. Once the schism opened, they were flung into different paths. Nicole wanted to be popular and part of the cool kids. Chase, five years on, hadn’t really properly handled his mother’s death. It was easy for them to simply pretend they were never friends. But that also twisted them, Nicole in particular, worse than Chase. She needs to change Chase to make their ruse work because, at the end of the day, everyone she was friends with was fake as shit. It couldn’t just be that she rebounded to Chase after learning she couldn’t get Brad. She couldn’t allow someone who did not at all match the in-group to enter. Dee talked to Chase about how she felt kind of like an imposter because while she was now pretty and popular, she didn’t feel like anyone really cared about her if she ran into any troubles. It turns out that she really had to change her outside because no one forgot she used to be ugly and fat. They really didn’t care about what was inside her.

It’s an old type of teenage movie that probably wouldn’t be very successful with today’s kids. But it deals with the right topics. It’s far from a bad movie. It had so many of the right pieces that, if tweaked, could make for an even better movie. It wasn’t really even a box office flop. It just got pushed under the rug while the flashier movies from the two or three years before it got better remembered.

And so, thinking back on October 1999, when I finally got to see my beloved Melissa Joan Hart on the big screen in a leading role, I still get the same feelings I had then. This isn’t an Academy Award-winning movie, but it’s still an enjoyable movie. It’s incredibly watchable. In fact, I would watch it again if the itch struck me again. This is a good first step for an actress who should have done a bit more. I still feel as though the debacle of pearl-clutchers getting angry over her Maxim and Bikini Magazine photoshoots (though, post-Sabrina MJH did get a chance to grow up a little bit), and the underperformance of a movie, which had a title changed to promote/ride the coattails of a different young woman becoming popular, changed the course of Melissa Joan Hart’s career for the worse. Seriously, I wish the movie’s title had never been changed because that is the one negative I can give this movie. Drive Me Crazy is a very bad title for this movie. Next to You was much, much better, and would maybe even make this movie more memorable.

To answer a related question I was posing between the lines a few weeks ago, when this theme month began… I chose to do a whole month of a girl who possessed the entirety of my heart nearly 30 years ago because, well, aging is a funny thing. I’m a 49-year-old man now. My birthday hit just before the second week of this theme month. I find myself thinking a lot about the 90s these days. I’m a child of the 80s, but I largely came into who I am today in the 90s when I became a high school student and a young adult, and then a full-on early 20s adult.

I’ve always likened myself to a Time Lord of Doctor Who fame. Like the Doctor, I find myself regenerating every so often into a fresh, new version of myself. While whatever new version of myself emerges from this regeneration, it’s still built on the foundations of the versions of me from before. I think everyone does this in their own ways. However, you get to so many versions of yourself that you can’t help but think back on some of your favorite versions. Yeah, when I was 20 or 22 years old, I had a lot of not-so-great traits. I was frustrated, angsty, and had a pretty nasty temper. I wasn’t so good at handling responsibility (an argument can be made that I am still having an issue with that). I often had my head in the clouds (I can definitely say that is a foible I have to this day). I didn’t set myself up to succeed very well.

But goddammit… Those were some of the best times of my life. I had a girlfriend at the time I really, really liked. I learned so much about life and people thanks to her. She let me be me while I loved her being her. No, I’m not talking about Melissa Joan Hart. I mean, I had a real girlfriend who liked that I adored Melissa Joan Hart in an innocent way. I like to reconnect with those younger versions of me and enjoy what was good about that time. I don’t want to go back and relive those days. I want to be glad I lived them. I want to be happy that those good times shaped the good times that came later and the ones I experience to this day.

Melissa Joan Hart, while someone whose religious beliefs and more conservative political values are vastly different than my own, is most definitely a figment of that past that I love to reconnect to when I can. Yeah, I didn’t even mention that aspect of who this person is that I just glazed all month long. It doesn’t really matter. Much like why I write B-Movie Enema each and every week, this month was more about me than it was Melissa Joan Hart. I wanted to revisit an old major crush of mine. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel good to reconnect to that.

Jesus… That’s two months down in 2026 already. Next week, Roger Corman is back, baby! After the satisfaction I received from watching last fall’s Frankenstein from my main man Guillermo del Toro, I need more Frank in my beans. I don’t know what that means, but I do know it’s 1990 and I’m gonna talk Frankenstein Unbound!

Until then, remember you all drive me crazy, and I wish Melissa Joan Hart a good night.