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From the title, you might think that All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is some kind of romantic comedy—but you’d only be partially right. It’s significantly darker—and bloodier—than your average chick flick. It is however, still good for plenty of laughs—though I’m not really sure it’s supposed to be.
All the boys at school do, in fact, love Mandy Lane (Amber Heard). Actually, they’re obsessed. When school let out for the summer, Mandy was just Mandy. But when she came back to start her junior year, Mandy was suddenly the hot chick in school. Boys are smitten—to the point that they’re willing to risk death just to get her attention. None, however, succeed in getting those few glorious moments with her.
As the school year comes to a close, three guys are ready to give it one last try. Red (Aaron Himelstein) invites Mandy to his parents’ secluded ranch for the weekend—along with four other it-crowd friends. Surprisingly, Mandy agrees—and the race is on to see who can finally win Mandy’s, er, heart. But instead of getting laid, one by one, the kids at the ranch start getting killed.
This teen slasher flick is pretty tame as far as horror movies go. And I’m not sure if it could be much more cliché. It’s low budget and often corny, and some of the acting is pretty bad. But I’m going to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt here and say that the corny clichés were intentional—because they actually make All the Boys Love Mandy Lane entertaining, in a craptacular kind of way.
You want to talk about clichés? How about the three main female characters: the bitchy blonde it-girl (Whitney Able), her “fat” (meaning: 98 pounds instead of 95) brunette sidekick (Melissa Price), and pure, sweet, virginal Mandy, whose parents died when she was just a little girl (and who, incidentally, always wears white). And then there’s the setting—the ranch, out in the middle of nowhere, protected only by the strong, silent ranch hand, Garth (Anson Mount). There’s a good amount of T and plenty of A, not to mention underage drinking and illegal substances galore. And, of course, the not-so-mysterious killer. With all those clichés, you’d think I’d hate it. And, for a while, I did. It starts out rather slowly, and I was even a little bit bored. But as the clichés get more obvious, and the lines get sillier, I couldn’t hold back the giggles anymore—and I finally just sat back and let myself enjoy it.
As long as you don’t take All the Boys Love Mandy Lane seriously, you may find that it’s actually entertaining. It may not be the romantic comedy that it sounds like it could be, but thanks to the clichés and the silliness—and an unexpected twist or two—it’s a light little slasher flick that chicks might actually find entertaining.
