With Ms Charley to the press screening of It’s a Boy Girl Thing, a high school body-swapping comedy. The plot: a boy and girl who don’t get on magically switch bodies due to some ancient relic or other. Cue the usual comedic consequences, followed by lessons about what matters in life, and then the inevitable romantic happy ending. Hardly an original tale. Still, I decide to troll along as interpretations of gender-swapping and metamorphosis are favourite themes of mine, no matter how mass-marketed. It also helps that the boy is Mr Kevin Zegers, last seen as the son in Transamerica. Like Cary Elwes, Jared Leto and River Phoenix before him, he’s one of those preternaturally beautiful young actors that one wants to keep tabs on before the rude interception of career vicissitudes, or the ever-popular drug-inspired early grave, or simply the cruel volleys of age.
His mother is played by the frankly unlikely Ms Sharon Osbourne, of Ozzy and Asda fame. Her acting talents as evinced here will not, I suspect, give Ms Streep any sleepless nights.
Despite a few scenes of nudity which must pitch this toward the older side of the teen market, there’s the disappointing eschewing of any true sexual exploration: the boy-as-girl very nearly has sex with a man, but doesn’t go through with it. The leads fall in love while thus displaced, but don’t act upon such urges until things are back to normal. As Charley points out, it’d be more interesting if they slept together or even just kissed while in each others’ bodies, but this is, we must presume, Going Too Far.
So we get the fossilised set pieces as tried and tested by every US teen flick since the 80s, not least the climactic all-or-nothing football match. And yet Mr Zegers and Ms Samaire Armstrong – who has fun swaggering and swearing – are such a watchable and convincing couple, the film is just about redeemed. Interestingly, Mr Z is more convincing as a girl in a boy’s body than he is as a macho sports jock. Far too moisturised for ball games.
Ms S suggests I sign up for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month event that runs in November. Although it has the slight whiff of US Self-Help-ness about it, I think it can only be a good thing. So I’ll give it a go.
