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BY GARY SUSMAN
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Love may not cost a thing, to paraphrase well-known ascetic Jennifer Lopez, but high-school popularity is expensive. It costs engineering geek Alvin Johnson (Nick Cannon) $3000, and that’s just start-up expenses — the value, in labor and cash out of pocket, of fixing the crumpled Cadillac of teen princess Paris Morgan (Christina Milian), which he does in return for her pretending to be his girlfriend and lifting him out of dork purgatory. Plus, there’s a whole new wardrobe, mostly Sean John track suits and Nike sneakers so fly you have to wear them dangling from your neck lest you scuff them by actually walking around in them. Not to mention the cost of grooming — waxing those eyebrows and mowing down that Afro so as not to look like the love child of Brooke Shields and Tito Jackson. This hip-hop-flavored remake of 1987’s Can’t Buy Me Love doesn’t escape the trap of fetishizing the consumerism it means to satirize — to judge by the film’s blatant and frequent product placement, director/co-writer Troy Beyer seems to have missed the irony. The only reason for anyone over 17 to see Love Don’t Cost a Thing is scene stealer Steve Harvey, who as Alvin’s old-school mack daddy of a father pulls off two roll-on-the-floor-funny sequences where he teaches his son about condoms. Nickelodeon vet Cannon is gifted at physical comedy, and pop singer Milian is credibly sweet, not to mention beloved of the camera. Both have ample charisma, something else you can’t buy.
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