Review: Kickin' It Old Skool

It's not just that the painfully atrocious Kickin' It Old Skool is entirely lacking in laughs, wit, energy and good humor. That'd be enough to dismiss the thing as yet another sloppy comedy -- but this movie is much worse than that. Basically, the flick looks like something that was thrown together by a couple of clueless amateurs who just got done watching a double feature of Big and Breakin'. If you've been waiting your whole life for someone to combine those two movies into one unwatchable feature, congratulations: Here it is -- and you're the only one who'll enjoy it.

Jamie Kennedy, often funny elsewhere but so not funny here, plays a moron who wakes up after two decades in a coma and decides to participate in a break-dancing competition. To that end, he must convince his three old buddies to join the crew, get close to a cute girlfriend from the past, and thwart the conniving villain who wants to spoil the fun. It's basically an Adam Sandler screenplay that got tossed into the garbage a few years back, only to be fished out by Kennedy's agent, rewritten by a guy who pens episodes of Beauty and the Geek, and handed to a director who barely has an idea which end of the camera points out. But it's not the paper-thin (and plagiarized) nature of the plot that annoys me, nor is it the dead-eyed acting performances, the egregiously lame comedy material or the fact that the thing runs over a hundred merciless minutes.

No, what bothers me the most is that something this poorly shot, flatly written, horrendously edited and otherwise lacking in every conceivable component germane to quality filmmaking -- still made it through the system and showed up at your local multiplex hoping for money. It almost seems like first-time director Harvey Glazer was participating in a bet to see if he could create a movie this terrible and still receive a full-bore theatrical release. Had it been released directly to video, Kickin' It Old Skool would still remain fifteen kinds of wretched, but at least you wouldn't be asked to part with quite as much cash for the experience of suffering through it.

Truth be told, I held a small semblance of positivity as I walked into Kickin' It Old Skool, as I find that Jamie Kennedy can (on occasion and usually in small doses) be a pretty funny guy. (I'm one of the only writers I know who gave his Malibu's Most Wanted a positive review.) But if the aggressively infantile Kickin' It Old Skool had been Kennedy's debut, I suspect his agent would now be scrambling to book some infomercials or Hollywood Squares appearances. As the socially, emotionally, physically, romantically and generally "retarded" Justin Schumacher, Kennedy seems intent on ensuring that he'll never work in movies again. His performance is perpetually pitched at a high-tone squeak, his "punch line" deliveries flop out of his mouth like warm spittle, and his overall screen presence is best described as "so unlikable you'll want to climb into the screen and smack the guy in the face."

Kennedy's supporting cast fares no better, but let's face it: With material this awful, the cast could have included Tom Hanks, Steve Carell and Will Ferrell and they still would have contributed to one of the weakest comedies you'll ever see. In an effort to include literally every easy joke in the universe, the screenwriters decided that Justin's posse must contain an Asian dork, a black wimp and a Mexican fattie. And because those nationalities clearly don't provide enough rip-snortin' comedy material, we're also subjected to endless jokes about farting, falling down, the act of urination and the hilarious humiliations that arise when you're homeless.

Each lame-duck gag hits the screen with an audible thud before the director decides to point his camera at something even less amusing. (Seriously, this movie's idea of humor is to litter the screen with pop culture references from the '80s, period, and when that doesn't works, it just asks someone to fall down or walk into something.) Save for the opening and closing scenes, the entire movie could be re-edited at random and the horrid thing would still make the same amount of sense. (As in: none.) Smallville's Michael Rosenbaum, who plays the sneering weasel of a villain, is the only one who comes close to wringing a few chuckles out of the proceedings, but even he is constantly undermined by the witless script and ham-fisted directing.

I realize it's kind of silly to get all worked up and dole out the 90-cent adjectives for a throwaway comedy this base and mindless, but I'm stunned that something this cheap, chintzy and flimsy ever made it into movie theaters -- and to ask folks to drop more than 90 cents on a movie this shamelessly callow, clumsy and undercooked, well, it irritates me just a little. Even the target audience, which surrounded me during a half-empty opening-day matinee, was laughing more AT the movie than with it. Hey, at least they got some laughs for their seven bucks.