Everything is bigger in Texas. The accents, the music (both kinds), the cheerleaders, the quarterbacks, the fixed elections, the cows… the love of God and, if Slap Her, She’s French! is any sort of yardstick, the stereotypes.

Starla Grady (Jane McGregor) is the quintessentially clichéd cheerleader who is, of course, dating the high school quarterback and sees Barbie as a role model. Little Ms Popularity, she’s basically your typical vacuous overachieving underachiever – she may seem outrageously successful and all popular like, but in nothing that actually matters in the big scheme of stuff.

A herd of silly moos...

But it’s her scheme, so it does matter to somebody. Doing tres mauvais (like, that’s really bad and all) at French studies, in which a failing grade may prevent her from fulfilling her dream of becoming a kind of Katie Couric media-babe with added twang, she convinces her family to take in a French exchange student who just may be able to help with those grades. The fact that her timing in dropping this little morsel of information clinches a beauty pageant win is purely coincidental, of course.

Enter one Genevieve LePlouff (Piper Perabo), French girl (she must be, she wears a beret and has an outrageous accent – and this is in a sea of Texan drawls). At first an introverted little rose of a thing, she soon blooms and sets about systematically subsuming Starla’s life as it becomes abundantly clear this little French wallflower is actually a big artiste de merde. From the quarterback boyfriend to the head cheerleading gig, it all falls Genevieve’s way as Starla’s whole orbit hurtles seriously out of kilter. But Texans have grit, and our put-upon heroine just ain’t gonna take this icky stuff lyin’ down, y’know? Especially when there just may be more to Ms LePlouff than first meets les yeux…

This must be the French chick then...

A sometimes intriguing mixed bag of influences – a liberal dose of All About Eve, a beefy chunk of Drop Dead Gorgeous, a generous sprinkling of Clueless with a pinch of Better Off Dead for good measure - there is absolutely nothing original about Slap Her, She’s French! in any way. This isn’t to say it doesn’t have its inspired little moments; just that generally the inspiration is easily attributable to something which had already preceded the existence of this masterpiece of derivation.

The two leads do show some fire at times, and there are some fun additional characters – notably young Jesse James (who should have his parents hung, drawn and quartered for saddling him with that particular moniker) and a decidedly sleazy turn from Michael McKean, never one to resist the lure of a pay cheque – any old pay cheque – it would seem. Still, at least the whole thing ably avoids the trap of becoming your typical bodily fluid-infused, every word begins with an ‘F’ teeny sleaze-fest – although some may be pleased to know there is some vomit.

The trip to DVD has been quite a good one for what is quite a low budget flick. Delivered in a ratio of 1.85:1 and 16:9 enhanced, save for some fine grain popping up here and there all is clear and well-detailed. Colour is at times quite flamboyantly rendered, but never to the point of inducing eye-bleed, blacks are solid and the few shadowy scenes that appear all show what’s going on perfectly clearly enough thankyouverymuch.

Unlike overseas releases which were only in stereo, we’re given a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix to play with. Whilst generally a fairly talky-talky film and not needing much in the way of sonic star-jumps, a few scenes here and there allow the rears to kick in substantially, complete with subwoofwoof backup. As long as you can deal with outrageously Texan accents you’ll have no trouble understanding what’s going on here as far as dialogue is concerned, and it’s all synched perfectly well.

Sacre blue! The extras have been stolen! Admittedly, however, the complete lack of bonus goodies doesn’t annoy so much on discovering we only missed out on a couple of trailers and a sub-five minute featurette.

As derivative as they can possibly come, Slap Her, She’s French! is still relatively enjoyable for what it is – another in a long line of teen films which makes a perfectly formed soufflé seem brick-heavy by comparison. Still, it’s a fun diversion for anybody who likes spotting the many “inspirations� within – and does have the odd bitchslap or three for those who get off on that kind of thing. Y’all.