Taglines: Love don’t cost a thing but it pays to be yourself.
This movie is a modern day update of the classic 1987 teen movie “Can’t Buy Me Love,” Alvin Johnson is a high-school senior, a likable brilliant outcast who regrets the years of intellectual endeavors that kept him and his un-hip friends from learning other skills such as socializing, getting girlfriends and hanging out with the “Elite Crowd”.
When Paris Morgan (queen of the Elite crowd), wrecks her mom’s car, Alvin tries to help her out by mortgaging his future. In exchange for Alvin’s automotive skills and $1500 in car parts, Paris agrees to “fake a front” to the whole school that she and Alvin are dating. As Alvin’s ego soars he stands the chance of losing his true friends, his chance for a scholarship and a shot at a real relationship with Paris.
In Love Don’t Cost A Thing, an urban comedy inspired by the classic 1987 teen romance Can’t Buy Me Love, likeable outcast Alvin Johnson (Nick Cannon) is looking to bust loose. With his head always buried in a book or under the hood of a car, Alvin has spent the last three years of high school grinding away at his studies and working as a pool boy to earn extra cash. No doubt, Alvin?s focus has paid off: he’s finally saved enough Benjamins to finish building an engine he designed an engine that’s going to win him a much-needed college scholarship.
But while Alvin is off the charts academically, socially, he’s a big phat zero. Invisible to the ‘Elites,’ the school’s designer label-sporting in-crowd, Alvin spends his Saturday nights playing cards with his equally dorky friends and watching home basketball games from the visitors section.
It doesn’t help that Alvin is a bit of a disappointment to his father Clarence (Steve Harvey), an old school player who longs to re-live his glory days as a ladies man through his impossibly shy son. “All that workin’ without any lovin’,” Clarence cautions, “will drive a man crazy.”
As he enters his senior year, Alvin is jonesing to kick his nerdy persona to the curb and somehow become cool enough to chill with ultra-popular students like Paris Morgan (Christina Milian), the hottest girl in school and queen of the Elites. When Paris accidentally wrecks her mother’s Cadillac Escalade, Alvin seizes the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and engineers a plan to launch him from pariah to player. He presents her with a simple deal: in exchange for Alvin laying down the cash and fixing her mother’s car, Paris will fake a front “pretend to date him” and ensure his entr’into the ranks of the school?s elite.
Desperate to get the car fixed before her mother finds out about the accident, Paris reluctantly agrees to Alvin’s plan with a couple of conditions. Number one: it’s for two weeks only, and number two: Alvin better not even try to look at her booty.
With Paris on his arm, he rockets from Alvin the nerdy pool boy to ‘Al,’ a stylin’ playboy who rolls with the Elite crew. His newfound swagger earns Al mad props from the jocks and gets him noticed big time by the bootylicious shorties who once shunned him.
As their relationship evolves, Alvin brings out the best in Paris, but Al is bringing out the worst in him. Caught up in the material rewards of living large, Al is convinced that being popular is better than being a social leper much to his dad’s delight. But if he chooses to keep perpetrating his big pimpin’ persona instead of keeping it real, he risks permanently alienating his real friends, blowing off his shot at the scholarship and missing the signs that while everyone else is falling for Al, Paris might actually be falling for Alvin.
Love Don’t Cost a Thing
Directed by: Troy Beyer
Starring: Nick Cannon, Christina Milian, Steve Harvey, Kenan Thompson, Kal Penn
Screenplay by: Troy Beyer
Production Design by : Cabot McMullen
Cinematography by: Chuck Cohen
Film Editing by: David Codron
Costume Design by: Jennifer Mallini, Christine Peters
Set Decoration by: Joyce Anne Gilstrap
Music by: Richard Gibbs
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content / humor.
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: December 12, 2003