The New Guy
All team (80)
Short description
Dizzy Harrison is a high school nobody who is bullied relentlessly, so he engineers his own expulsion. His plan lands him in jail, where a fellow inmate named Luther teaches him how to reinvent himself as someone confident and intimidating. Released and enrolled at a new school under the name Gil Harris, he quickly becomes the most popular student there, winning over classmates and catching the attention of Danielle. Holding on to that new identity proves harder than building it, especially once a rival starts looking into his past.
The New Guy is a 2002 American comedy directed by Ed Decter, working from a screenplay by David Kendall, and produced by Todd Garner, Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray. DJ Qualls leads as both Dizzy and Gil, with Eliza Dushku as Danielle, Zooey Deschanel as Nora, Lyle Lovett as Bear Harrison, Jerod Mixon as Kirk and Illeana Douglas as Kiki Pierce. The film runs 88 minutes and cost about 13 million dollars, returning roughly 31 million worldwide.
Audience response has been modest: on IMDb it holds 5.8 out of 10 from around 40,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6 out of 10 from 681 votes. A film critics' rating of 3.4 out of 10, drawn from 98 reviews, places professional assessment well below the viewer scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Some scenes of the film were shot at W. Charles Eakin High School, but students were not allowed to appear in the crowd scenes. This was because the law required extras to be at least 18 years old, and the students were underage. Only some teachers and support staff played roles in the crowd and minor scenes.
- Daniel mentions at one point that her grandmother was Albanian. The ancestors of the actress Eliza Dushku, who played the role, emigrated to the US from Albania in the 1920s.
- All the scenes at "Rocky Mountain High School" were filmed at W. Charles Eakin High School. Half of the school was still empty, as it had just opened. The school nameplate at the entrance was changed to the one required by the plot, i.e., to "Rocky Mountain". This caused confusion for some time – parents in cars and school buses were bringing students to the wrong place.
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