Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, 14% of 119 critics have given the film a positive review, and an average rating of 3.6/10. The site's consensus states: "Heavily reliant on stereotypes and shallow teen comedy clichés, I Love You, Beth Cooper is a humorless affair that fails to capture the charm of its source novel." On Metacritic, which calculated an average score of 32 out of 100 from 30 critics, the film received "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a "B−" grade on a scale of A to F. Critics described the film as "puerile and uninspiring nonsense," "lacking in charm, tempo and warmth of any kind," and "starved and lethally bland", while some critics, such as Peter Bradshaw and Roger Ebert, called it an average teen comedy.
Frequent criticisms were towards what were considered flat performances. Simon Foster bashed the film as a star vehicle for Panettiere; Cinematical.com found her unconvincing as a rebellious girl, while Kaleem Aftab of The National opined that she made the character look more like a "spoiled brat". "She's photogenic, granted, but dimensionless and has minimal screen presence—the final reel about-face that is synonymous with these types of films rings as false as a plastic bell", wrote Foster. According to Thomas Leupp of Hollywood.com, "Panettiere is appealing as a bright-eyed cheerleader whose perky exterior hides a bad-girl streak, but she doesn't quite project that unattainable quality the role seems to call for. She's more like the superhot girl-next-door who you think is attainable but probably isn't."
Time Out London elaborated about the acting overall that "lines fall flat thanks to long pauses and hammy delivery." Leupp commented that Rust "attempts to compensate for the flat material he's given by overplaying virtually every joke—to the point at which you'll actually root for his antagonists to pummel him without mercy." The inclusion of a Ferris Bueller's Day Off lead as Denis' father also ticked off reviewers.
However, Carpenter and Rust's presences received some positive comments, particularly their chemistry together; in fact, The Independent's Anthony Quinn wrote that Rust and Carpenter were the only reasons to watch the film. "One of the film's running gags—that Rich is gay but won't admit, even to himself, what everybody knows—is uncommonly heartfelt because of the way the actors handle the situation. In most movies you have to take for granted that the buddies really are buddies. Not here," wrote Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor. Reiner additionally claimed that "in his first starring role, [Rust] shows off the crack timing of a seasoned pro."
When it came to characters, the stereotypical lead male (in Aftab's view) of Denis Cooverman was the most criticized. According to Foster, he's "game but drawn so broadly he never amounts to more than a comic foil, well below the romantic lead the film asks him to become." Time Out London called him "a truly ungainly specimen with little to offer [...] other than novelty value and infatuation." The character of Rich Munsch was criticized by Empire writer William Thomas, who wrote that his arc "is treated so simplistically that it might offend even Bruno" and has "a character tic (he constantly quotes movie dialogue, complete with the film name, director and year of release) thats so annoying you want to say, 'This has all been just a big mistake.'"
The film's humor was panned. Brought-up examples in reviews included the tampon nosebleed scene, Rich's referencing of movie quotes, an off-screen threesome, a Star Wars lightsaber fight, a moment where a character steps in cow poop, and "all comedy pratfalls followed by some excruciating silences where you're meant to be laughing." While Columbus' dip into edgier material was applauded by The Independent's Anthony Quinn, it wasn't by Thomas, who unfavorably labeled it a "curiously chaste affair [...] that feels curiously unsure of itself, as if Columbus wants to take that extra step into slightly raunchier, Risky Business-style material, but just can't bring himself to." Rainer and Can Mag writer Fred Topel were turned off by the film's comic portrayal of life-endangering situations, such as sequences depicting Beth's poor driving skills.
Some reviewers negatively compared I Love You, Beth Cooper to other 1980s-teen-movie-styled products. Simon Foster strongly disliked its removal of the genre's traditional "all-important sweetness": "It is not a step forward in teen movie scriptwriting to expose a school bully's history as a sexual abuse victim for mirth, or to make a running gag out of one student's closeted homosexuality, nor pitch the felonious actions of the blonde teen queen as the height of coolness." In the mind of Allan Hunter of the Daily Express, "the mixture of obvious jokes and winsome sentiment pretty much robs the film of any guilty pleasure value it might have provided." Some reviewers thought the only good scene was its opening, Leupp reasoning that it "shows the potential to be something sly and clever." Topel suggested the script had "some clever ideas," but they were ruined by Columbus' "telegraphed" directing style. The film's slow pacing was also criticized.
In more positive reviews, Rainer, while suggesting I Love You, Beth Cooper was derivative for a Doyle script, also opined it to be better than most other teen films for its "unnaturally lush and woodsy," setting, unique premise, and rejection of a "handy" moral promoting traditionalism: "it doesn't take us long to figure out that Beth is more than a bimbo. Or to put it another way, she's a bimbo with heart. She's drawn to Denis because he adores her for who she is rather than (or in addition to) how she looks." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly considered its story "pleasantly low-key" and essentially timeless.
