Good concept, poorly executed.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I associate Steve Guttenberg with B-movies. However, I thought he actually did a very credible job in "Don't Tell Her It's Me." I especially liked his portrayal of the bald and bloated Gus."Don't Tell Her It's Me" is also on TV and DVD as "The Boyfriend School," which is also the title of the very funny book by Sarah Bird on which the movie is based. Sarah Bird also is credited with the screenplay for the film, which appears to have been her first attempt to write for the film industry. I am guessing that she accepted too many suggestions from people with more film experience than she had, because the movie is so below the quality of the book. Someone even convinced her to change the title, although later it was changed back to the book's title.The film begins with a clever, if not original, device of restarting the movie when the narrator, Lizzie Potts (Shelley Long), a best-selling romance novel author, changes her mind about what she is composing in her mind. Her mind drifts to her younger brother, Gus (Steve Guttenberg), who we learn is a cartoonist. Gus is recovering after finishing 2-years of treatments, for Hodgkin's Disease, that caused him temporarily to be bloated and hairless. We see some of Gus' cartoons about his medical exams in animated form. This part of the movie I liked. The film went downhill from there.Lizzie is concerned that Gus never had much of a social life and his medical problems aggravated his poor interaction with people his age, so she fixes him up with Emily (Jami Gertz), an intelligent and attractive but nerdy reporter she meets at a book signing. Emily tells Lizzie she would love to meet a man who is sensitive and cares about her. She claims that physicality doesn't matter. However, after Lizzie, her husband, Emily and Gus meet for a disastrous dinner, Emily rejects Gus because he is not physically attractive.Lizzie decides she needs to shape Gus into every girl's dream date using her considerable knowledge of what her young female readers seek in a man. The rest of the movie is a predictable story of Gus changing, assuming a more exotic identity, and Emily becoming in love with his assumed persona. Of course the crisis is that eventually he has to reveal who he really is.My problem with the film is several stale and sophomoric bits of humor that have little to do with advancing the plot. This includes a scene where Emily fills her mouth with some bad-tasting strange-looking exotic food at the dinner party. It is missing whatever humor made the original book such a success. In addition, someone decided to tack on incidental music that sounds like Muzak and doesn't even fit the tempo of the on-screen action. I also found myself dreading the few times Mitchell, Lizzy's husband, appeared. He was supposed to be a funny character. I found him irritating, not funny.

This is a romance with a top cast of experienced actors who really click together. Shelly Long also starred as a class act in 'Troop Beverly Hills' as a fashion-minded Wilderness Girl's (sort of like the Girl Scouts) leader. In this movie, she is a top-selling romance writer with the pen name of Vivica Lamoreaux.In "Don't Tell Her It's Me", which I did read the book, the movie starts with Gus, a cartoon artist and survivor of a year of radiation treatments and chemotherapy who is finally cured but still looks all swollen up like a living Mr. Potatohead. He is bearing up under his awful looks with the help of his irrepressible and upbeat older sister, Shelly Long as Lizzie Potts.What makes this movie so transcendental and such a grabber is that with the help of Lizzie, Gus is transformed from a hopeless reject into every woman's dream of the perfect romance rogue. He works off the fat and swollenness, and his hair grows back, and he becomes--well--shall we say, Steve Guttenburg at his lady-killer best? The fact that he is not a real rogue, but that Lizzie is helping him to look and act like one, moves the viewer to transports as Gus actually achieves the look more completely than a real rogue could possibly manage. In fact, he retains his intrinsic 'niceness' while outwardly making a masterly showing of being the ultimate romantic rake, a motorcycle-riding long-hair who goes by the name of 'Lobo Marunga'.Gus' intended target, Emily Pear, on whom he is hopelessly stuck, is played by lovely Jami Gertz, who is torn inwardly between whether to fall for -and permanently tie the knot with- her secretly unfaithful newspaper boss, Trout, played by Kyle MacLachlan, or to go for Lobo, the totally unexpected wild card in her otherwise dead-end life. Emily is endlessly polite to a fault throughout the movie, as well as sexy, articulate, compassionate, and a total fox. She affects this fazed-out look at times in perfect response to various situational predicaments which is infinitely expressive.The transformation of potato-Gus into lean muscular rogue Lobo pulls at the heart, as a hopeless reject becomes every lonely woman's fantasy ideal, and it is done believably in the personification of Steve Guttenberg. There is even a medical doctor listed in the film credits at the end, as a consultant on the disease Gus is recovering from. Also, the special effects and make-up department succeed in making Gus look like a real medical patient recovering from the disease. It's not fakey at all. He really looks it.My trust never felt betrayed by the actors' performances, or how they portrayed themselves. Shelly Long has an amazing range of facial expressions, with her eyes the most expressive of all. Steve Guttenberg makes the most fantastic and enjoyable changes in appearance from potato Gus to lean heart-stealer Lobo, and finally to super Mr. Nice Guy. Jami Gertz has a way with silent looks that must be seen to be believed. Kyle MacLachlan is a very funny two-timer in an off-handed way that is never affected and actually humorous. Not to be overlooked is beautiful American-born Madchen Amick, Trout's secret playmate, who is actually half German, a quarter Norwegian, and a quarter Swedish; as well as Lizzie Potts' husband, Mitchell Potts, played by equally funny and experienced Kevin Scannell; the married stunt team of Tony and Jeannie Epper, the authentic motorcyclist John 'Speed' Finlay, and others.The movie makes skillful use of contrasts and contrivances, such as the little boy on a bicycle watching Lobo dance with Jamie, a boy who might well one day become a future 'Lobo' lady-killer himself. Also, while Lobo is competing with Trout for Emily, Lizzie Potts is cheerfully hanging stuffed trout decorations on her living room wall. And it's wrong to 'borrow' someone else's motorcycle without permission, but it's more 'okay' somehow if you hook and tear your dress on it first (like; it 'owes' you something, right?) and are deeply in love with its owner and desperate to get him back.There is no down-and-out nitty-gritty genuine hatred of anyone by anyone in this movie, and the non-stop competition for Emily's searching heart reaches awesome levels. It's a very adorable story with the ultimate happy ending.The book this movie is based on is titled "The Boyfriend School". The original movie and VHS were titled "Don't Tell Her It's Me", but when they re-released it on DVD, they re-adopted the title "The Boyfriend School".

Maybe this movie is not an epic, but it doesn't try to be something it's not. What it DOES have is an incredible chemistry between Jami Gertz and Steve Guttenberg.Of course this love story has been done so many times before, but this movie did it right.4 out of 5 stars.

While this was a cute and funny film, I was still very disappointed in it in very much the same way I was disappointed in the film version of "The Object of My Affection." The films concentrate on the emotions and issues of characters who were secondary to the problems of the main character.In the book, Emily Pear was the viewpoint character. It was her story and HER learning experience...not Gus's. You understood her a lot better and got to know her. I suppose that wouldn't make for a lot of action, but it was a delightful read...I wish the movie could have been as much fun...instead it was a ditzy little ramble. Too bad.