Aaron Paul Made His Film Debut in This Teen Comedy Version of Cyrano de Bergerac

The late ‘90s and early ‘2000s were flooded with a wave of teen rom-coms in Hollywood. While some movies like Can’t Hardly Wait and She’s All That were successful staples of the era, many imitators failed to deliver anything original. 2000’s Whatever it Takes falls into the latter category of not being the era’s finest hour.

Director David Raynr’s modern-day retelling of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac was a launchpad vehicle for future stars James Franco and Shane West, playing exact opposites, working together to fall for the girls in their class. It was one of several teen comedies at the time, including Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You that used literature as source material to relate to young people growing up in the early days of the internet and cell phones. Though its lead actors suffer from being cardboard cutouts of John Hughes’s teenage archetypes, the hidden gems in Whatever It Takes are its future stars in the background. More specifically, a then-unknown Aaron Paul eight years before his breakout role in Breaking Bad.

What Is ‘Whatever It Takes’ About?

High school accordion and baseball player Ryan (West) has a longing crush on Ashley (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe), a well-off popular girl in school. Meanwhile, the school’s football star Chris (Franco) is oddly attracted to Ryan’s longtime friend and neighbor Maggie (Marla Sokoloff), who spends her after-school hours at a nursing home. Upon learning about Chris being Ashley’s cousin, Ryan makes a pact with the jock that they help each other win over their respective love interests.

The boys’ plan results in them having to switch up their personalities. Self-absorbed Chris tries to attract Maggie through letters and romantic one-liners using Ryan’s own words. Ryan takes on a bad-boy jerk persona to stimulate Ashley’s interest at the cost of trash-talking his close pals Floyd (Paul) and Cosmo (Colin Hanks). But as Ashley’s shallow ways and Chris’ need for a fast hookup with Maggie bring increasing doubt, Ryan begins to realize that perhaps he should be setting his sights on the girl next door.

Whatever it Takes does its best to state a message about staying true to one’s self and following your heart rather than social status. Despite its attempt at recreating an otherwise tragic love story, the teen comedy suffers from being an identical She’s All That clone, going for the cheap potty humor laughs and an obvious third-act twist with Franco taking a villainous turn in his quest to seduce Sokoloff’s character. The ending can be predicted as immediately as Chris’ initial aggressive advances towards Maggie and how the girl next door appreciates Ryan’s geeky traits without judgment. Even O’Keefe’s role as the attractive but dim-witted popular girl seemed like a relic of ‘80s teen sex romps. All these characters are overshadowed by the performance of one unknown actor.

How Aaron Paul Steals the Show in ‘Whatever It Takes’

Whatever It Takes’ true standout is not a pre-Spider-Man Franco, Hanks, or Nick Cannon as a chess club kid. The real breakout star is Paul as West’s spikey-haired geek pal Floyd. Though the character represents West’s arc in feeling regret for dismissing his friends to please O’Keefe, Paul’s role has a unique hero’s journey in Whatever it Takes as he seeks fame through mayhem. His goal is to get arrested like his hero, Virgil Doolittle (David Koechner), who pulled a prank on the school statue years prior. Paul spends much of his limited screen time stealing the show with innuendo one-liners and his pyromaniac obsession, including a scene where he sabotages a house party by lighting up fireworks indoors. Such a weird character looking for cheap thrills in an otherwise romantic comedy proved to be an early stepping stone for Paul to the kind of drug-induced, rough-around-the-edge persona of Jesse Pinkman.

The destructive behavior of Paul’s Floyd culminates with the ultimate party-stopper in Whatever it Takes. He sabotages the Titanic-themed prom by opening the swimming pool underneath the basketball court, causing chaos among students and staff. If this setup looks familiar, the sequence was filmed at Beverly Hills High School’s ‘Swim Gym’, where the pool party sequence from It’s a Wonderful Life took place. It’s the kind of over-the-top comedic mayhem that Whatever it Takes needed to lean on rather than act as a Pretty in Pink homage with its class warfare themes.

The clichés and tropes mixed with sanitized American Pie humor make Whatever It Takes very uninspired despite the source material. Paul’s scenes are the film’s biggest highlights, to the point where he could have easily warranted a spinoff movie.

Whatever it Takes is streaming on Tubi in the US.