Keith Plot Summary- No Spoilers
Natalie (Elisabeth Harnois) is the perfect high school student: she has a partial tennis scholarship to Duke, she edits the school newspaper, has a great GPA and doesn’t miss a school party. Her parents (mother played by Jennifer Grey) couldn’t be prouder-yet they are still monitoring her achievements closely just to make sure. At one party, she finally meets the new handsome foreign student Raff (Ignacio Serricchio) and starts dating him. Her whole life is one perfect checklist.
Enter Keith (Jesse McCartney). Keith hates what the popular kids do and he thinks that arranging one’s life according to their future college is just stupid. He is impulsive, fun-loving and likes living his way. So when he becomes Natalie’s lab partner at a chemistry class, their personal differences drive Natalie crazy at first. The last thing she needs is a lazy, stupid lab partner with no goals…
But she quickly realizes that Keith is actually really smart and really interesting. So despite a non-problematic romance with Raff, she can’t resist hanging out as “lab partners” with Keith. But the more she hangs out with him, the more she starts liking him and starts realizing that she doesn’t really know anything about him. And his quirkiness might have completely different foundations than she thought.
As Natalie falls for Keith, she starts questioning her own” goals”- which seem to be more her parents’ than hers- her picture perfect relationship with Raff and whether she should be with Keith. There is only one problem: What the hell is Keith hiding?
Why Keith Is Worth Watching
Keith is sweet, touching and feels real. Just when you think you watched all the high school romances with potential tragedies lurking ahead, a film comes along and tells you the story in a way that moves you, makes you laugh and maybe even cry a bit.
As opposed to the popular girl clichés, neither Nat nor her best friend are cheerleaders. Also the boy that is doomed to lose the girl- the popular guy- is not shallow, or mean in anyway. Sure, he is not the most interesting character, but he is exactly the type of guy you’d want to date at least once in high school. It is also cool that the leading character is not conventionally good-looking, or that it is not the victory of the nice outcast vs. the mean popular kid. If someone acts like a jerk, it is either Keith to Nat, or Nat to Raff.
The two main characters are far from perfect, and they screw up a lot of things. The dialogue and scenes are highly refreshing and entertaining, and it does deserve that 7.5 rating on IMDB. One viewer compared the film to Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Elizabethtown, Vanilla Sky)’s style, and I can see that. I love Crowe, and I really loved Todd Kessler’s Keith.
As to Keith’s motives, and when he really started to fall for Nat, the audience is divided. I for one believe that Keith already had a crush on Natalie before they became lab partners, and that he was as crazy about Natalie as she was about him. If anyone wants to see this story in which a girl stupidly screws up her life for a guy who mistreated her, you are missing out on a lot. And saying that Keith had no right to act way is well…over-simplifying things. Unless you went through the exact same thing at 17, you really aren’t the one to judge his actions and reactions.
Highly recommended to all ages and sexes. And it feels a lot more natural than a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. 8/10 from me.
Fun notes:
Fun to see Jennifer Grey as the boring mother whereas she is most famous for being the idealist girl falling for a dancer and standing up to her father because of it in Dirty Dancing.