When high school student Berke Landers is dumped by his girlfriend Allison, in a desperate attempt to win her back he auditions for the school drama production, a musical version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", even though he has no experience of either singing or acting. Fortunately, his best friend Felix has a musically gifted sister, Kelly, and Berke enlists her help to get himself through the audition. Initially, he only succeeds in winning the part of Third Attendant, but after an accident puts out of action the student initially cast in the role, he finds himself promoted to the leading part of Lysander, playing opposite Allison's Hermia. The other two leading roles of Helena and Demetrius are played, predictably enough, by Kelly and Allison's new boyfriend, Striker. In an equally predictable plot twist, Kelly finds herself falling for Berke. The result is a love-triangle which loosely parallels the one in Shakespeare's play.
This film is sometimes referred to as a "teen comedy", but it is rather more innocent than some other recent films in that genre. Apart from a running joke about an over-sexed dog, there is little of the grossness that characterised films like "American Pie" or "The Sweetest Thing". If those are typical "teen comedies", "Get Over It" is perhaps best categorised as a romantic comedy whose leading characters just happen to be teenagers. There is, however, plenty of humour, much of it directed a the film's adult characters, such as Berke's embarrassingly liberal parents, the sort of middle-aged swingers who still think they are teenagers themselves, or Desmond Forrest Oates, the hilariously camp and manic theatrical director, or the glamorous but terminally accident-prone Dora-Lynn (played by real-life supermodel Kylie Bax), still at school in her twenties because she spent six years in a coma.
If there is a moral to this story, it is that a good heart is more important than good looks. Kirsten Dunst's Kelly, although she has plenty of girl-next-door charm, is not a classical beauty like Melissa Sagemiller's Allison and Berke is rather nerdish compared to Striker. (In British slang the term "berk" means a fool; I wonder if the scriptwriters were aware of this when they chose the name). The unsympathetic characters tend to use "loser!" as a term of abuse for anyone they hold in contempt, but at the end of the day it is the handsome but arrogant Striker and the beautiful but self-centred Allison who end up the losers in love. Allison ditches Striker when she discovers that he is no more capable of being faithful to her than she was capable of being faithful to Berke. She hopes that she can resume her relationship with Berke, but it is clear that he will choose Kelly, who loves him for himself, over Allison who merely regards him as a consolation prize because she cannot get the boy she really wants.
Shakespeare's comedies frequently end with several weddings, and this structure is parallelled in "Get Over It". Berke ends up with Kelly, Felix and Dora-Lynn fall for one another and a third romance develops between two other students. Even the dog finds a lady friend. One might think that a musical aimed at teenagers would be dominated by loud rock music, but the music is often surprisingly lyrical, especially the main song "Dream of Me", supposedly written by Kelly herself. (Although it did perhaps need a rather stronger voice than Kirsten Dunst's to put it over). "Get Over It" may not be Shakespeare, but it is an amiable, good-hearted and often amusing teenage rom-com. 6/10
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