As the class of 1998 graduates, a big party is planned for that night. Everyone is going to be there, and one of the more interesting rumors (at least to Preston Meyers, played by Ethan Embry) is that Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Heweitt) and Mike Dexter (Peter Facinelli) have just broken up after a four-year high school-long relationship.
Preston has been in love with Amanda since she walked into high school and sat next to him, after all, it was fate that he was the first person to see her walk into the school, have her sit next to him, and heck, they even both like strawberry pop tarts. But almost immediately, Dexter swoops in and takes her as his own and Preston never gets a chance to express his love, until tonight's party that is, when he shall finally give her the letter that he has been writing and re-writing since that fateful home room.
Preston's best friend and loner, Denise (Lauren Ambrose), reluctantly joins Preston to the party, but ends up getting trapped in a bathroom with Kenny (Seth Green), who was Denise's best friend until Kenny changed at the beginning of junior high and took on a whole new persona, "Special K". Being stuck in the small room for the length of the party forces the two characters to deal with their built-up feelings.
Another side plot involves William (Charlie Korsmo), the class valedictorian and penultimate nerd, who has decided to take vengeance against Dexter for a high school life of torture and ridicule. Unfortunately, in his attempts to get into Dexter's inner circle (so he could convince him to come out and get jumped), he ends up drinking alcohol for the first time. Ultimately he gets dunk, takes the stage and somehow becomes a bit of a heartthrob in the party.
Meanwhile, Preston's attempts to talk to Amanda keep getting blocked by various people (one of them being Melissa Joan Hart's character trying to get everyone's yearbook signature). When he does finally build up the nerve, he walks into a scene that appears to be Amanda making out with some new guy (of course, he doesn't see the whole picture). Disheveled, Preston leaves the party and throws the letter away. But through an odd sequence of coincidences, the letter eventually ends up in Amanda's hands, she reads it and thinks it's the sweetest thing she's ever read; too bad she has no idea who Preston is.
While Preston wanders the night trying to reinterpret the signs and decide if the love was meant to be, Amanda wanders the party trying to figure out who this Preston is. If you haven't seen the movie yet, then I don't want to talk about how it all falls in place, but Can't Hardly Wait is definitely one of those movies where everybody gets what's coming to them.
My personal favorites from this film is Seth Green's character who seems to be a bit confused about his ethnicity. I also love some of the brief appearances by either semi-stars at the time (Jerry O'Connell), or people that have gotten a bit more famous (like Selma Blair or Donald Faison of Scrubs).
With the 10 Year Reunion Edition comes an extra commentary track where the cast comes back and goes over the film again, as well as a reunion retrospective featurette (which are always fun). Other new featurettes include "Making of a Teen Classic" that is a similar featurette as the retrospective, but this one focuses more on the crew and not the cast, and "Life of the Party" focuses on the teen party sub-genre and why it is so popular.
Like I said at the beginning, this is probably my favorite 90's teen movie, and seeing it again after all these years in hi-definition with a ton of new features is spectacular. If you love the genre and somehow haven't seen this film, or if you were in high school during the 90's, then you definitely need to look into this release. It's a great movie and the special features really add a lot of value to the purchase.
