Love Don't Cost a Thing

Love Don't Cost a Thing serves up shallow, fickle people doing stupid things...and these are the characters for whom we're supposed to be rooting. When impossibly popular high-school hottie Paris Morgan (Christina Milian) crashes her mother's Cadillac SUV, nerdy Alvin Johnson (Nick Cannon) sees his chance: in exchange for spending his own hard-earned, scrimped-and-saved $1,500 on parts and doing all the work, Paris agrees to pretend to be his girlfriend for two weeks. Massive leaps of illogic render the story moot--if she, poor little rich girl, has the dough to buy him an entire new designer wardrobe for a makeover to ease him into the “in” crowd, then she could have paid for the repair to the car herself. But that's hardly the biggest problem here: this excruciatingly vapid film celebrates the trite superficiality of high school culture as much as it thinks it's condemning it. Love may not cost a thing, but 105 irreplaceable minutes of your life is far too high a price to pay here. Not recommended. [Note: Available in both widescreen and full screen versions, DVD extras include a 22-minute “making of” featurette (including behind-the-scenes of Murphy Lee's music video), 11 minutes of additional scenes (including an alternate ending), the music videos “Shorty (Put It on the Floor)” by Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Chingy, and costar Nick Cannon and “Luv Me Baby” by Murphy Lee, and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a so-so film.] (M. Johanson)