Movie line makes forgettable film worth the time

“I am the least notable person in this vehicle.”
This line comes from “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” a fairly awful film that deservedly bombed at the box office. I wasted a couple of hours watching it last Saturday, although that gem of a line made my time worthwhile.
To put the line in context, two high school geeks in a tiny car with the beautiful girlfriends of some bullies who chasing them are marveling at the situation they’ve gotten themselves in. One of the geeks, who is not the protagonist in the story, suddenly comes to the brilliantly self-aware observation that of the five people in the car, he’s the least memorable person.
It’s said at a moment that is completely unexpected, which makes it funnier.
Even funnier is the fact none of the other four people in the car comment on his comment. He makes the observation, and true to his statement, nobody even bothered to listen to it.
I wish the rest of the film were that witty, so then it could have become one of those films that gets repeated on Comedy Central or TBS nine times a week, and when it’s on, channel skippers would stop to wait for the classic lines, much like they do when “Office Space” or “Caddyshack” is on.
Unfortunately, that line is the only one worth waiting for, and unless a person’s timing is perfect, it’s likely people will skip to the next channel.
I find this line brilliant because I have often felt like the least notable person in a room or vehicle many times, especially in high school and college.
My family moved frequently when I was younger, so I never established a large network of friends. I never had a problem making a few closer friends, but not enough to win any popularity contests.
I moved to Berlin at the end of my eighth-grade year, after two and a half years at a small rural school in Neshkoro where the seventh and eighth grades shared a room and teacher. It was quite a culture shock as I quickly discovered kids there fooled around with drugs and alcohol, and even more shockingly, sex. The closest in Neshkoro we got to any of these things was when we had too much sugar and then played tag, with the guys hoping to grab a handful of, well, it rhymes with “rest,” in tagging any one of the five girls in our class.
I’m sure every Neshkoro kid wasn’t completely Rose-from-“The Golden Girls” wholesome like I was, but I’m fairly confident most of them spent more time thinking about ways of completing “The Legend of Zelda” than ways of conquering Zelinda, the new girl who – don’t gasp – had two earrings in each of her ears.
Distraught I wasn’t as knowledgeable in non-classroom life as my new classmates in Berlin, I spent the majority of my high school years trying to be the least notable person in the vehicle, or room. I figured if people didn’t realize I was there, then maybe they wouldn’t point out the fact I wasn’t notable.
It worked so well that by the time I got to college, I had a perfect strategy for life: be the least notable person. I had a select group of close friends, and I didn’t branch out to others or do anything that would make me stand out.
It wasn’t until I got into the real world that I discovered this strategy was foolish. The least notable person gets nowhere, and it makes for a fairly boring life.
It’s also not a good strategy when you’re a journalist and talking to others is a big part of the job. While I don’t have to stand out in a room, making people aware of my journalistic presence is a must, both for my ability to do my job and for the fairness of the people who may be subjects of any stories I might write.
Since graduating from college, I’ve found a good balance in which I’m usually not the most notable person, nor am I the least notable one. It works well, and it has allowed me to find a great moment in an otherwise completely unnotable film.