Charisma Carpenter's main claim to fame is that she is extremely hot and was one of the main characters on the WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She later moved to the spin-off Angel, and left presumably to pursue bigger and better things. One thing that many people didn't know about Carpenter (Timemaster) is that unlike her cast mates, she was nearly thirty when Buffy started, and she still came off convincingly as a high schooler. Just what exactly does this have to do with What Boys Like? Well, of the entire cast of this insipid film (finished for nearly three years before its release date) Carpenter has the highest profile, so it would suit the filmmakers to add her name to all the advertising. It's too bad that she only appears in the film for a few minutes in a fairly inconsequential role. What Boys Like is for everybody who enjoyed Tomcats and watching stupid horny people trying to do stupid things. Three years was not enough time to sit on the shelf, they should have just thrown this away.
The central character is Jay (Christopher Wiehl, The Broken Hearts Club, Cold Hearts), who just broke up with his girlfriend. His friend Dewey (Alex Nesic, Van Wilder, High Crimes) thinks he is too uptight, and makes a bet with Jay. At their friend Scott's (Michael Trucco, Ablaze, A Girl, Three Guys, and a Gun), Jay needs to have a one-night stand. If he does, he wins Dewey's prized possession, Wilt Chamberlain's old car. Moreover, Dewey needs to abstain from sex for the entire weekend, and if he does, his prize is Jay's virginal Jesus freak sister. Accompanying them is token black man Phil (Duane Martin, Deliver Us from Eva, Any Given Sunday), and all three are on the lookout for some hot bridesmaid action.
To complicate things, writer/director Lawrence Gay reveals that Scott's fiancee Reese (Lisa Brenner, The Patriot, Alex in Wonder) was Jay's high school girlfriend. She left abruptly, so the two were never able to see if they were meant for each other. Well, they each still have feelings for each other, and worse, it looks like Scott wants to marry Reese for her father's money. Jay still needs to find somebody to sleep with or else his sister loses her virtue, and Dewey tries as hard as he can to abstain from sex. Oh, and token black man Phil pierces his nipple and pretends to be an underwear model in order to try to bed a bridesmaid.
Gay's problem is that he does not make anything funny. What Boys Like is a series of jokes that fail time after time. Everything is sophomoric and crude, and because things are in the toilet for so long, it all starts to seem offensive. If things were at least funny, Gay could redeem himself a little. Instead, there is something profoundly creepy about a brother wagering his sister's virginity. A film like this relies on a sense of warmth to overcome its inherent predictability. It is a foregone conclusion that Reese and Jay will get back together, mainly because Gay portrays Scott as such a jerk. It's too bad that Jay himself comes off either as whiny and pathetic or something of a jerk himself, causing the viewer to want him to lose.