The most popular girl in school dates the most popular guy, but not in this case.
Our hero is a nerd.
Let us find out how he ended up dating the most popular cheerleader in his school, making
every other kid a little too envious of him.
The movie opens in Tucson, Arizona.
Ronald Miller, a nerdy high schooler, is clearing weed from the front porch.
A recklessly driven car that stops near his house catches his attention.
A smile spreads on his face as his high school love, Cindy Mancini, the prettiest, most popular
girl on campus, gets out of the car.
She lives next door.
She had been doing what she usually did, going shopping with her two girlfriends and spending
lots of her mother's money.
Cindy's mother welcomes them at the door.
When Cindy is asked to return the cards, she gives them all the cards she used.
Her mother chides her.
She wants Cindy to be responsible like Ronald now that she is a senior.
Ronald has been mowing the lawns of the people's houses to save up some money to buy a telescope.
At that precise moment, both look towards him, who has been witnessing all this.
With all that attention on him, he decides to impress Cindy and starts his lawn mower,
when all the dirt from the ground comes splattering on his face.
He makes a complete fool out of himself, making Cindy laugh.
The girls are in Cindy's room discussing their cheerleading routine when the phone rings.
One of Cindy's friends picks it up and gets excited, as she announces the most popular
jock in their school Bobby, is being interviewed on T.V.
Bobby and Cindy are dating.
They all rush to switch on the T.V. because they are expecting him to say Cindy's name.
But nothing of this sort happens.
The girls cheer her up, and they all leave for their cheerleading practice.
Cindy doesn't let her friends know she is disappointed, but we see it as she looks at
Bobby's jacket and throws it on the bed before leaving.
Ronald rides his bike all the way to the practice ground to see Cindy practice.
His friend Kenneth, another nerdy boy, comes there looking for him as they are supposed
to meet at the library.
Ronald shares his desire to be a part of the famous group for once in his life.
As they leave, Kenneth asks Ronald if he has a crush on Cindy, but he reminds him that
Cindy is way out of their league.
On the field, one of the jocks, Quint, flirts with all the cheerleaders, including Cindy.
But Cindy doesn't flatter him.
Cindy's friend Patty is hosting a party at her place.
She invites the jocks who, by now, are distracted by the other women cheerleaders.
They all agree to come.
Ronald and Kenneth are riding their cycles back home.
Ronald cannot get the idea of being popular in school for once, out of his mind.
He keeps telling Kenneth how it is essential for them to make high school memories, as
this is their last year with parties and proms.
At a stop, they see a luxury car stopped beside them.
Kenneth suggests Ronald buy one of these to impress the women.
They have a playful banter as the signal turns green, and they continue their ride.
Back at home, Cindy's doorbell rings.
It is Rock, one of Cindy's new boyfriends.
He doesn't shy away from flirting with both the mother and the daughter at the same time.
Cindy doesn't like him at all.
Before her mother leaves with her date, Cindy asks if she can borrow her suede outfit for
tonight's party.
Her mother denies and leaves.
But this doesn't stop Cindy from taking it anyways.
Ronald is having breakfast with his parents.
They ask him about his savings, and he proudly replies he has saved 15 hundred dollars for
his telescope.
Though the telescope costs 1000 dollars, he plans to invest the rest in a market accountant.
Ronald's little brother Chuckie mocks him for mowing lawns and then laughs at him more,
when Ronald tells his parents that he will be attending a card game this coming weekend.
At the party, Cindy gets many compliments on her outfit.
She lies that her boyfriend Bobby sent it to her from Iowa.
Patty interrupts Cindy saying she didn't see that outfit in her closet when she was at
her plays yesterday, but Cindy dismisses her and walks away with the other girls.
As she makes her way to another group, she gets red wine spilled all over her dress by
one of the jocks.
She hurriedly rushes to the washroom to clean up the dress before it leaves a permanent
mark.
It is not coming off, and Cindy is nervous.
Ronald goes to the mall to buy himself a telescope.
The salesman is telling him the specifications of one of the telescopes.
As Ronald sees through the lens, he spots Cindy among the crowd in the same mall.
He follows her through the telescope and finds her entering a clothing shop, and frantically
showing her ruined dress to the shop manager.
Ronald excuses himself and enters the clothing shop.
He hears Cindy pleading with the manager asking for a replacement of the dress.
She offers to work in the store after school in order to pay for the replacement.
But the owner is reluctant.
He is not willing to replace the outfit.
Ronald cannot see Cindy distressed, and he makes a choice.
Between his telescope and a new dress for Cindy, he chooses to help Cindy.
But he has his own conditions for helping her out.
This is a perfect opportunity for him to fulfill his dream of becoming famous, and what better
way than to date the most popular girl in school?
He asks Cindy to pretend to be his girlfriend for a few weeks.
Cindy has no other choice but to agree.
She doesn't want to face her mother's wrath, if she finds out that Cindy ruined her expensive
outfit.
The next day at school, Ronald and Cindy decide the terms of their pseudo-relationship.
Now that it is settled, Cindy doesn't want Ronald to be non-existent in his style.
So she gives him a little makeover at the school for the day.
They enter the school together, instantly turning all heads.
Nobody can believe Cindy is coming to school with Ronald.
Cindy walks to her friends Patty and Barb and introduces Ronald as Ronnie.
They instantly recognize him not as their classmate but as a boy who mowed their lawns.
In the class, the teacher asks his students if they have tried any exciting experiments
in the summer.
A student jokes that he grew fungi and spores in his parent's fridge.
Everybody laughs.
Kenneth asks Ronald if he purchased the telescope.
Ronald makes an excuse by saying that thousand dollars are a big deal, so he wants to think
it through.
The teacher sees them talking and asks Ronald to recite the bones of the upper appendicular
skeleton.
Cindy and the others are in the kitchen when patty confronts her about Ronald.
She says they are just friends.
But her friends protest and asks about Bobby.
She gives them a feisty comeback as an answer, and they back off.
At the lunch break, Ronald and Cindy share a table.
Cindy is reluctant, but Ronald reasons that their relationship will be more believable
this way.
As they are about to eat, Quint comes and starts picking on Ronald, but Cindy takes
his stand and shoos Quint away.
Soon they are joined by John, Ronnie, Barbara, and Patty.
Ronald instantly makes a good impression on John and Ronnie by praising their skills.
He also tells them that he has visited every single one of their games.
While Ronald is trying to fit in with the popular group, his friends from the previous
group are curious to know as to what he is doing with the other group.
After school, Ronald and Cindy go to a diner and have pizza there.
Ronald is very hungry as he didn't eat lunch because of nervousness.
The other guys from school are also there.
Cindy thinks it would be nice if Ronald invited them to join them.
That way, he will get to make friends with them.
So Ronald goes over to the guys' table and invites them.
They instantly come for the free pizza and leave after taking all the slices leaving
nothing for Ronald.
That evening he gets ready to go to John's party with Cindy.
His parents are surprised when they learn he'll be going with Cindi Mancini.
Chuckie cannot believe his brother is going out with the prettiest girl in the whole county,
and thinks something fishy is going on.
So he runs after him to investigate.
Ronald goes to Cindy's house to pick her up for the party, but her mom mistakes Ronald
to have come for the mowing fee.
Once they leave, Cindy shows her displeasure at Ronald's incapacity to provide her with
a car ride to the party.
Ronald wants to walk to the party as it is a beautiful night, and the party is just a
few blocks away.
Cindy thinks otherwise and decides to drive her car instead.
Ronald asks if Bobby called, but she doesn't want to talk about it.
Ronald then assures her Bobby must be thinking about her.
Because he is trying to make a future for himself as a freshman in the big leagues,
he might not have much time to talk.
In the end, Ronald succeeds in making Cindy laugh with his wit and good humor.
Chuckie sees all this sitting on a tree, but still not satisfied that his brother can pull
off something like this, he decides to follow them.
In all this, Ronald forgot about the weekend game with his old friends.
John's party went well, and finally, the popular kids started recognizing Ronald.
They even complimented his style.
With the help of Cindy, Ronald's style got an upgrade.
At school, Kenneth is upset with Ronald, as he stood his old friends up for the entire
weekend without any explanation.
Ronald doesn't think much of it and dismisses everything with a vague promise of meeting
Kenneth on the coming weekend, before he leaves in a hurry to join his new famous friends.
Cindy sees a new side of Ronald every day.
One day he is washing her car because he regards Cindy's cheerleading hard work.
She doesn't think so, admitting she doesn't work much.
All she does is shopping and hang out with friends.
He encourages her that she can do anything she wants if she puts her heart and mind into
it.
Ronald's words give her the strength to show him her latest creation, a poem.
Nobody knows she writes, but she feels confident confiding in Ronald.
After reading one of her poems, Ronald appreciates her work.
She makes him promise to keep it between the two.
He promises.
They end up having a water fight, and the day ends with lots of giggles.
Cindy gives Ronald a complete makeover.
He has officially become one of the popular guys leaving all his old friends and his old
life in his past.
Ronald takes her to see the airport junkyard, which is a restricted area, but for them,
it is a thrill.
Ronald tells her all about the plane's history and takes her to see the oldest plane.
She is impressed with Ronald's knowledge.
Later, Ronald makes her see the moon with a telescope.
She is amazed to see how the surface of the moon has mountains, valleys, and canyons.
He tells her about the sea of tranquility.
It was there the first spaceship from earth landed.
The day also happens to be his birthday.
Cindy jokes that his interest in astronomy is the result of being born on that same day.
He clarifies that it is because he sees the moon as our future, where men from the earth
will be working or probably living one day.
At the end of their date, Ronald brings up the topic of their relationship.
Cindy gets excited as she too wants to talk about it as she has started liking Ronald.
But to her dismay, he tells her that today is the last day of their fake relationship,
and tomorrow they will be officially breaking up in front of everybody in the school.
Cindy is not happy at all.
The next day, Cindy goes to school after making up her mind, that she'll confess her true
feeling to Ronald, but Ronald misinterprets the whole situation and starts a fake fight
with her.
But in doing so, he says very mean things about her and ends up hurting her feelings
unknowingly.
But she forgives him as they meet up outside their house.
Cindy still doesn't tell Ronald anything.
She just warns him that sometimes being popular is a lot of work.
It is them trying to impress other people, and sometimes in doing so, they might lose
their uniqueness.
She then advises him never to change, even if he becomes the most popular guy in school.
He affirms he will not.
But he soon forgets all about it as he becomes one of the coolest guys, with every jock,
his friend, and every girl in the school drooling over him.
He starts acting like a nincompoop.
He even takes Barb on a date, thus creating tension between Patty and her.
As they spend the evening together with their other friends, Patty tries to make a pass
at Ronald.
He doesn't mind and starts two-timing the two friends.
Patty invites him to the dance party.
He agrees, but he doesn't know how to dance.
Beginning the following day, he wakes up early in the morning to learn dance moves.
Instead of following the routine, he just flaps his arms like seal flippers.
Instead of learning sophisticated dance moves, he accidentally learns the African anteater
ritual.
Ronald and Patty arrive at the dance party.
Patty is excited, but Ronald feels intimidated seeing so many people dancing beautifully.
Ronald is practicing his moves in the bathroom when his teacher walks on him dancing.
Ronald's old friends are bullied at the party and called nerd herds.
Rather than dancing, they are made to sit in one corner.
Ronald is nervous but preps himself with some fruit punches and goes to the dance floor.
He takes a second to recount the steps and starts performing the routine.
At first, the other kids are bewildered at his moves, but they soon join in, and Ronald's
new 'trendy' dancing makes him the most popular guy in school.
Kenneth and others have the laugh of their life as they know exactly what this routine
is called.
Ronald spots Cindy and calls her babe, behaving obnoxiously arrogant.
He mocks her date, a college kid named Brett.
But she is in no mood to listen to him spewing insults and walks away.
After the party, Ronald and Patty are in his car.
Patty removes her blouse for him.
Ronald is nervous as it is his first time experiencing an intimate moment.
He finally, after seventeen years, three months, and five days gets to touch certain female
parts.
He giggles as he remembers the moment before sleeping.
It is Halloween, and Ronald is going out with his new friends.
They are hooligans who create a ruckus every year by throwing rotten tomatoes, eggs, and
poop feces bombs on people's doors.
This year too, they decided to do the same with the addition of Ronald to their team.
The house is Kenneth's, one of Ronald's nerd friends.
This year the jocks ask Ronald to fulfill the 'tradition.'
Unaware that Kenneth is waiting with a trap to catch the nuisance creators this year.
As soon as they start throwing the eggs and tomatoes, they make way for Ronald to throw
the dog poop at the door.
Ronald does it but gets caught in the trap.
As soon as Kenneth sees who the culprit is, he lets him go before his dad can hand him
to the police.
At dinner, Chuckie shows his report card to his parents.
They are proud of him that he is making an improvement.
When they ask Ronald, he says he didn't get his.
They are having a normal conversation when Ronald suddenly gets defensive and walks from
the dinner table, annoyed.
Cindy's new boyfriend is as annoying as he can get and makes her do chores for him, like
bringing him a milkshake which has to be a certain kind.
When she gets it for him, he complains, which is it for her.
she has had enough, so she dumps the entire contents of the glass on his head and dumps
him too.
When she comes back home, she finds her mother early from her date.
The mother-daughter spends quality time with each other over a movie.
The next day, Kenneth ignores Ronald at school.
Kenneth is furious that his best friend has become a bully.
Later John invites Ronald to the new year's party at his house.
Cindy meets him by the lockers and asks if they can go to the airplane graveyard sometime,
and she even wrote a poem for him called 'Broken moon.'
Ronald acts arrogant and reminds her that she ignored Ronald Miller for seventeen years,
and now that he has become cool Ronnie, she wants to get together with him.
Simultaneously there is another girl by her locker who is eyeing Ronald, and he is reciprocating
just as much.
Once again, he insults Cindy.
At the New year's party, Cindy gets drunk and is looking for the bathroom.
She walks in on many couples in different rooms.
She finally finds the washroom, but when she looks inside, Ronnie is sharing a private
moment with a girl and reciting Cindy's poem.
Cindy is heartbroken as he breaks his promise of keeping it a secret, and she leaves in
tears.
Bobby shows up at the party.
He soon learns that Cindy went out with Ronald and breaks up with her in front of everybody.
Cindy is beyond furious.
She starts yelling at Ronald in front of everybody.
She reveals how he was tired of being a nobody, so he paid her one thousand dollars to date
him for a month.
After the revelation, everyone turns their faces from him, and John asks him to get out
of his house.
He awkwardly makes his way out, trying to hold onto his slipping fame while trying to
play it cool.
Even the girl he just slept with refuses to talk to him and treats him like a nobody.
Ronald walks alone on the streets, looking at the New Year's celebration happening in
every home through the windows.
He curls up in his garage and cries, pondering over what he has lost.
The next day he walks into the school as if nothing has happened, but nobody greets him
like the way they used to just until yesterday.
Even at lunch, nobody wants to sit with him.
He is back to square one, where he got bullied by the popular guys and even got food thrown
at him.
When he tries to go back to his old friend Kenneth, he doesn't acknowledge Ronald.
He is angry at Ronald for what he did on Halloween, which was unacceptable.
Ronald leaves feeling guilty.
He then tries to talk to Cindy but Cindy avoids him.
He follows her to the women's bathroom.
He apologizes for being arrogant and for losing himself, blinded by fame.
He confesses that he ever wanted was to be part of Cindy's life, so he got this stupid
idea, and it made him something he was not.
Suddenly the door opens, and the Principal comes out.
She takes him to the office and gives him a month's detention.
At a shopping mall, Cindy is buying some cosmetics when Chuckie comes there to talk to her.
He retorts as his usual self, and Cindy sends him away with a face full of powder.
Ronald tries to call Cindy because he cannot get her out of his mind.
For the old times sake, he gave his name as Donald to Mrs. Mancini when he called, but
Cindy refused to talk to him.
So finally, to get her to talk to him, he starts mowing her lawn.
Enraged, she comes outside and starts yelling at him.
But he pleads her to listen to what he has to say.
So she calms down and lets him talk.
He tells her how he wanted to be with her, and finally, when he was there, he had changed.
But after what happened on New Year's, he finally realized how cruel he had become and
in the process, had hurt his loved ones.
So he asks for her forgiveness and a chance to start over, but this time with the real
him.
Cindy is still hesitant.
At school, Kenneth is teaching patty Maths.
This makes the jocks jealous, and they try to teach him a lesson.
Ronald is still outcasted, and he eats alone, sitting under a tree.
Quint goes over to Kenneth's table and picks a fight with him.
He accuses Kenneth of pulling a "Ronald Miller scam."
Ronald sees this and hurries to rescue Kenneth.
He grabs a baseball bat on his way, just in case he needs it to stand in front of a jock.
Ronald threatens to break Quint's arm if he doesn't let go of Kenneth.
But Quit doesn't seem to be bothered by his blatant threats.
Ronald has had enough of always being a victim of the mistreatment.
So he displays his anger by smashing the bat against a nearby table and letting out a scream
in frustration.
This makes Quint let go of Kenneth's collar.
Everybody is looking at them.
Ronald starts talking about a time when Quint, Kenneth, and he were friends.
Quint broke his arm as a child when he fell off Ronald's tree-house, and it was Kenneth
who carried him twelve blocks to the hospital while Quint cried the entire way.
And now he is threatening to put Kenneth to eternal sleep, because he is talking to Patty
at his side of the cafeteria.
Ronald continues saying how he feels embarrassed because he wanted to be on Quint's side.
But he messed up and lost all his friends by buying his way in.
He criticizes the whole concept of the popular and the nerds, his side and their side, when
it is already tough enough to be one's true self.
He then walks off the scene.
Quint realizes his mistake and apologizes to Kenneth by extending his hand of friendship.
Everybody in the cafeteria applauses and cheers.
Cindy, too realizes that Ronald has really changed.
He is no more that arrogant jerk he had become.
Ronald is back to mowing the lawns.
It is sweltering outside.
He is mowing Cindy's lawn.
Cindy comes out to hand him the money for his services.
To make a small conversation, he tells her that he saw the crack in the moon last night.
She tells him that she did too.
They are suddenly interrupted by a horn of a car.
It is Cindy's friends.
They have come to pick her up.
She takes her leave after saying bye to Ronald and walks to where her friends are waiting.
Ronald sees her get into the car and drive off.
Ronald too goes back to doing the mowing.
As he returns on his mower, he hears Cindy call him Donald.
He stops, and Cindy comes running to him, hopping on his mower.
She chooses to spend time with him rather than hanging out with her popular group.
He asks her to the prom, and she says yes.
They kiss as they ride into the sunset on a lawnmower.