Lovewrecked Movie Review

With her impossibly perky demeanor and abject willingness to make a fool out of herself at every opportunity, Amanda Bynes is tailor made for a move like Lovewrecked, where she'll be doused with bugs or putting dirt in her teeth... all while wearing a bikini.

After an endlessly lengthy setup, the film takes Bynes to a Caribbean island where she's going to be working for the summer. Her best friend (Jonathan Bennett) and her nemesis (Jamie-Lynn DiScala) are both also working there. Amazingly, the rock star (Chris Carmack) she has a crush on is also in attendance (not working, but as a guest), and fate conspires to get both Bynes and Carmack on a pleasure cruise for the afternoon. Carmack goes overboard, Bynes jumps in to save him, and soon they wash up on what looks like a deserted island. It isn't long before Bynes discovers they're marooned only a few hundred yards from their resort, on the other side of the island. Whoops.

Naturally, Bynes is so thrilled that she's got some alone time with Carmack that she hides this from him, sneaking back to the resort to grab bananas for them both while trying to make sure he doesn't catch on to their true location.

From frame one there's little doubt how this will end: Bynes is chipper and resourceful, while Carmack is shallow and stupid. Will he really turn out to be her dream date, or will she end up with that best friend she's known for so long but just hasn't thought of "in that way?"

With a terribly weak and trite script, Lovewrecked is hardly challenging fare, but it's not really very entertaining, either. Variations on the same joke are repeated over and over until it's worn completely through... and then the joke comes again. Frankly, even Bynes has made far better films, even though they're unilaterally targeted at the teenybopper crowd. Lovewrecked adds nothing to her oeuvre aside from showing off her physical assets: She's rarely seen in anything other than a two-piece.

Making the film worse is its atrocious sound, mastered so terribly that it frequently drops to near-inaudible levels, particularly during musical numbers. Then again, this drowns out a lot of vapid dialogue, so maybe that's a blessing in disguise.

The DVD adds deleted scenes.