Trojan War (1997)

The Trojan War (1997) starts with a pretty good premise, even if it was stolen wholesale from 1987’s “Some Kind of Wonderful”. Semi-geek virgin, desperately in love with the schools unattainable beauty who has become disillusioned with popular guy she has been dating. Protagonist’s gorgeous (anywhere but in this school) tomboyish best friend is secretly in love with him? Cut to climatic party scene at which all this is sorted out.

Unfortunately they stole only the premise and not the actual script (or the cast with the exception of Marley Shelton who makes a fine “dream girl” replacement for Hewitt), so the production falls far short of its predecessor. It also falls far short of its 1998 successor “Can’t Hardly Wait”, also featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt-this time as the unattainable beauty. In fact the writers of that film appear to have taken the script from “The Trojan War” and re- written it for an audience with IQ’s about 30 points higher. So my advice (unless you are a mega JLH fan) would be to stick with the predecessor and the successor and leave “The Trojan War” for its intended audience of wiggers and drones. The soundtrack is much better in those two films as well.

“The Trojan War” was pulled from its scheduled 1997 theatrical release because of poor projected audience numbers and filed away in the hope that Jennifer Love Hewitt’s skyrocketing popularity (insert “Can’t Hardly Wait”, “Party of Five”, and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” here) would change the equation and justify the promotional expense of releasing the movie. Even that was not enough for distributors to take a chance on the film and after a year of deliberation it went direct to video. And even with Hewitt’s continued success in “Ghost Whisperer”, the sales projections for a DVD release of “The Trojan War” has not excited anyone in the industry.