Love at First Hiccup is a 2009 romantic comedy starring Scout Taylor-Compton, Devon Werkheiser, Tania Verafield, Ken Luckey, and Adam J. Bernstein. The writers are Soren Frellesen, Dennis Jurgensen, and Barbara Topsoe-Rothenberg. The director is Barbara Topsoe-Rothenberg.
The story follows a high school freshman named Victor, who has fallen for a beautiful senior named Anya. There’s just one problem: Anya is already dating Peter, a stuck-up fellow senior who doesn’t actually care about her. Victor also, whenever he get close to Anya, develops a case of the hiccups. As Victor gets the nerve to go up and talk to her, Peter gets in the way and intimidates the freshman. Also, Anya and Victor’s little brothers, Zach and Brian, are trying to make a movie out of Victor and Anya’s relationship. They are always sneaking around, filming the two of them together without their knowledge.
One characteristic of this movie that seemed to stick out to me was the references to spiders and Spider-Man. The reference to the Spider-Man film comes near the beginning of the film where Victor and his friends are throwing a party. Anya comes with her friend Marisa. Victor has a fantasy that some of the guests are holding him upside-down and forcing him to drink beer. Anya steps in and stops it. Victor begins to hiccup. Then Anya approaches him and, while he’s still hanging upside-down, kisses Victor. This scene can be attributed to the scene in Spider-Man when Spider-Man is hanging upside-down as Mary-Jane Watson kisses him.
The reference to spiders comes when Victor receives a prank invitation to Anya’s birthday and calls her house to confirm it. Her little brother answers the phone and tells him that Anya wants a tarantula to go with her lizard. The problem is that Anya doesn’t have a lizard. When she later opens the present as her family, Peter, and Victor look on, Anya and her female relatives are startled at the sight of a spider. Peter deliberately tips the box over to make Victor look even worse. Incidentally, Anya’s father finds the whole situation hilarious and takes an immediate liking to him.
The two most interesting of the supporting characters are Brian and Zach, Anya’s and Victor’s little brothers, respectively. They dream of getting rich off of making secret home movies. At first, I thought that they were trying to sabotage their relationship, like Peter was trying to do. But, as you will see when you view this film, their only intent was to make a movie. The two of them clearly didn’t know the magnitude of what they were doing because they were too young.
To wrap, I think that Love at First Hiccup is a cute teen romance and I highly recommend it!