RAT BOYS

Two 14-year-old girls of the less-than-stunningly-beautiful variety use a chance encounter with a magic ring to provide themselves with dates for the big town dance. If you’re into, like, total fluff, this’ll do it. Marci tells in her amusing valley-girl style how she and her best friend Summer attempt to convince ultracool Jennifer to think they are not rejects. The transmutation of two pet rats into studmuffins provides the comic premise along with the change of weird Doris of the local secondhand shop into a famous soap opera star. Rat-training is a combination of reward and aversion with some complications in the reward part limiting it to food, and the aversion part limited to the use of an electric “Juicer Gooser” borrowed from the repellent twin boys next door. That an Indiana town is having “Spring Fling” in March along with blooming bougainvillea is no more outrageous than anything else that happens in this Hollywood-wannabe comedy by screenwriter Eberhardt. With no pretensions, this is just plain fun and as memorable as your last set of hiccup inducing giggles at a sleepover. (Fiction. 10-14)