Never Been Kissed MPAA Rating: PG-13 Entertainment: +3 Content: -1

How would you like to go back to high school as a 17-year-old again? Thats 25-year-old Josie Gellers (Drew Barrymore) first reporting assignment for a Chicago newspaper. Josies own teen years were a series of disappointments and heartbreaks, and her reputation as a geek has stuck with her through college and at work. Her undercover assignment starts out just as miserably until her 23-year-old brother (David Arquette) steps in to help her. He was Mr. Cool in high school, and knows the formula for becoming popular. Finally, Josie "gets it right," becomes popular without compromising her morals, and learns more about herself than about the teenagers. All the while, Josies co-workers are watching her mishaps and triumphs through the microscopic camera shes wearing. No doubt NEVER BEEN KISSED will be popular with teenagers and young adults. It is funny, touching and romantic.

Josie determination to find true love before experimenting sexually doesnt waver in spite of ridicule from her worldly co-workers at the newspaper. Her friend at work treats sex as a necessary ritual that has nothing to do with love. She shares with Josie details about her sex life, makes crude gestures to arouse a man sitting across the table in a business meeting, and insults her boss with remarks about his sexual prowess. She even ends up lecturing in a sex education class that includes condom instructions. Painful flashbacks of Josies own high school experiences include humiliating jokes played on her. Boys place an open can of soda in her backpack and, as it spills, it appears she is urinating in the hall. Four regular profanities, two s words and five other obscenities referring to male genitals are disappointing. When Josie is fed cake laced with drugs, she becomes high, performs a suggestive dance, and finally passes out. Although NEVER BEEN KISSED ends on an uplifting note, the path is strewn with crude sexual material, obscenities and profanities.

Preview Reviewer: Mary Draughon
Distributor: 20th Century Fox, 10201 W. Pico Blvd., LA CA 90035