Surprising Gem

So I've been watching alot of crap movies lately. Movies that I hope will be good, but never end up being worth a damn. But holy shit, found one that I expected to be terrible but was surprisingly good, and never got much attention when it came out. "It's a boy/girl thing" is a movie about opposite individuals being forced to overcome their differences to become better people and eventually fall in love.

So here's the part that probably scared people away from the theaters: The premise of the movie is that the smartest girl in school "Nell" and the Jock star-quarterback "Woody" are on a field trip to a museum. Woody is misbehaving with his buddy and is forced to partner up with Nell, who is mostly a social outcast. They get into an argument in front of an ancient Aztec statue of the god of trickery. The next morning when they wake up Nell is in Woody's body and Vice-versa.

Ok, so yea, terrible premise, but the rest of the movie is really startlingly good. Like I could not believe how good. The two lead actors are no-names, and are amazing at portraying the opposite gender. The girl had the broad male mannerisms down, she sat like a guy, her facial expressions were very much intune with the male character, it was amazing. The guy did a much more subtle performance, as he changed from a standard "outgoing jock dude" into a insecure, feminine, awkward guy. Even the male actor's vocal intonations changed with the swap. It was quite impressive. So basically, you have a movie about two actors who play themselves and eachother. Seen it done with two of the same gender successfully, this was the first successful cross-gender movie switch I've seen.
The other characters were much less notable, but each had their own personal moment of glory where their character shown through.

Even with the unique performance aside, this is a perfect feel-good movie. Everything happens the way you want it to happen, even if you didn't know you wanted it to happen that way. You know going in that Nell and Woody must get together at some point, but I was honestly expecting some cross-gendered awkward makeout sessions. I was terrified that the writers would be unable to resist this trap, but resist they did, and the results were much better than expected.

I can't imagine most movie fanatics liking this movie, it's too simple, there aren't any big surprises in the plot, but if you just like to sit down and enjoy a movie, I recommend this one. It delivers what you want and doesn't try to pretend to be a more important movie than it is.