The little girl from E.T. has come a long way to emerge as a very likable actress. Her new film, however, is another in a long line about high school life. Although this film is better than She's All That, Can't Hardly Wait, and Varsity Blues, it's still full of dumb characters and ridiculous situations. To top that, they don't even come close to matching the effectiveness of the similarly themed John Hughes' films of the 80's.

Drew Barrymore is a writer for the Chicago Sun Times (if you can believe that) who goes undercover as a high school student to write a story on teenage life. It appears her actual school life years earlier were less than pleasant. Barrymore exhibits all kinds of charm, but is hard to buy in the role of a reporter. Michael Vartan is a welcome screen prescence as one of Drew's unsuspecting teachers.

Screenwriters Abby Khon and Marc Silverstein and director Raja Gosnell add nothing new to this tired genre. Instead of giving us smart characters and fresh ideas, we get the same old predictable formula. The film tries to teach us that being a nerd is OK--an idea that worked much better in Revenge of the Nerds because that film never took anything seriously.

Drew Barrymore has demonstrated her winning screen presence in films such as Ever After and The Wedding Singer. Although she's still likable, it doesn't add up to anything worthwhile because her talent is wasted on a boring, familiar story with too many subplots.