There is a moment about halfway through
Kickin' It Old Skool where I smiled. That moment comes when the main character, Justin Schumacher (Jamie Kennedy), is on a date with a pretty young woman named Jennifer (Maria Menounos). Justin has recently awakened from a 20 year coma, and laments over the fact that he's missed so much, particularly the sequels to two of his favorite 80s movies,
Ghostbusters and Gremlins. This moment made me smile, as I consider
Gremlins 2 to be an unsung sequel, and any acknowledgment of it is sure to make me happy. I was grateful for this brief fleeting moment of joy, because the rest of
Kickin' It Old Skool is a crudely made, moronic cinematic junkyard that holds about as many laughs as the aftermath of a train wreck. The movie itself is a different kind of wreck, and were it not for the deplorable
Norbit, would easily grab the crown of being the worst film of the year.
So, why has Justin been in a coma? We learn that when he was a 12-year-old kid back in 1986, he was a champion breakdancer. Even back then, he had a crush on the lovely Jennifer, and while trying to perform a particularly difficult dance move in order to impress her, he fell off the stage and suffered a massive head trauma. His parents (Debra Jo Rupp and Christopher McDonald) have kept him alive all this time in his comatose state, but are starting to be pressured to pull the plug now that it's been 20 years since the accident. Miraculously, Justin awakens just in time. Unfortunately, he still has the brain of a 12-year-old, even though his body has aged to that of an adult. At least, the movie wants us to believe he has the brain of a child. The way Jamie Kennedy portrays Justin, it seems more plausible that he has the brain of a mentally challenged alien from Mars who doesn't know how to fit into human society. He hooks up with his childhood friends, including aspiring inventor Darnell (Miguel A. Nunez, Jr), overweight meter maid Hector (Aris Alvarado) and Asian office drone Aki (Bobby Lee). They want to win a big upcoming dance competition for a chance to win a big money prize so that Justin can pay back the medical bills his parents have been forced to endure the past 20 years. There's also the romantic subplot between Justin and Jennifer, as Justin tries to rekindle the flames they once held as kids, and prevent her from marrying the former school bully Kip (Michael Rosenbaum).
Does any of this plot matter? Not really.
Kickin' It Old Skool exists solely to make us laugh, and at that it is an appalling failure the likes of which I would not wish upon anyone. There are some hints at cleverness early on, such as when Justin discovers what MTV has become during the 20 years he's been asleep, or when he's visiting a local toy store and sees action figures based on characters from the new
Star Wars movies and not the characters he grew up with. After these fleeting glimpses of hope come and go in a flash, the movie gets bogged down in an endless series of unfunny racial gags, stereotypes and childish insults. Judging by the way the adult characters act in this movie, Justin isn't the only person who's been in a coma for 20 years, as everyone who surrounds him also acts like they're just being reintroduced to the world. How else can you explain the fact that the evil Kip acts like a lame parody of every teen bully villain in just about every 80s teen comedy ever made? Perhaps this was intentional, but the movie keeps on stressing that Justin is the only one out of touch with reality. I actually started to pity poor Jennifer, as she was forced to choose between a "man-child" from outer space, or an idiotic bully who still acts and talks the same way he did in the opening scene set in 1986. The way I see it, she loses either way. The only option I could see for the girl is to pack her bags and move to a town where the men don't act like complete morons. When the movie informs us in its epilogue that Justin and Jennifer went on to be married, I couldn't help but picture her sitting in a therapist's office a couple years later, talking about what a total mess her life has always been.
It's a popular belief that for every good movie, there's a bad version that attempts to tell the same story. This is the bad movie version of
13 Going on 30, a sweet and likeable romantic comedy from a couple years ago that handled a similar plot of someone from the 80s being transported into the present and trying to rekindle a relationship with someone from their childhood. The way the character was transported into the present day was much less believable, but it didn't matter, because the characters were much better and the dialogue was funnier.
Kickin' It Old Skool is the lamebrained brother of that much better film. Because it can't think of anything funny to do with its characters, it throws a bunch of 80s references into its dialogue and hopes we'll laugh. It even has some cameos, many of which exist simply for the sake of being a cameo and nothing more. Alan Ruck, best known for playing Matthew Broderick's friend Cameron in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, appears as Justin's doctor early on. There's also the seemingly required cameo by David Hasselhoff that every bad comedy needs to have. The cameo itself is bizarre to say the least, but at least holds the second moment that actually managed to make me smile. Everything is so depressingly mundane and below average about this movie, we start praying for the slightest bit of inspiration. The movie itself even looks uninspired. First-time director Harvey Glazer shoots the movie with a muted and washed out look that makes the entire movie look like an amateur student film rather than a theatrical release. The actors seem lost and confused, almost as if they're wondering right along with us why anyone would think this material was funny.
There are bad movies, and then there are movies so awful that you pity them.
Kickin' It Old Skool made me want to somehow find a way to put it out of its misery so I wouldn't have to watch it anymore. It's like being forced to watch someone die as it flops about in agony. It's painful, it's cruel, and you just want it to be over with. Judging by the literally vacant theater my screening was held in, people have found better things to do than to watch this. These people have my support, whereas the people responsible for this movie have my condolences. Hopefully something better will come along so that they need not have to remember this movie. I, for one, know that I'll be doing my best to forget it as soon as humanly possible.
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There is a moment about halfway through Kickin' It Old Skool where I smiled. That moment comes when the main character, Justin Schumacher (Jamie Kennedy), is on a date with a pretty young woman named Jennifer (Maria Menounos). Justin has recently awakened from a 20 year coma, and laments over the fact that he's missed so much, particularly the sequels to two of his favorite 80s movies, Ghostbusters and Gremlins. This moment made me smile, as I consider Gremlins 2 to be an unsung sequel, and any acknowledgment of it is sure to make me happy. I was grateful for this brief fleeting moment of joy, because the rest of Kickin' It Old Skool is a crudely made, moronic cinematic junkyard that holds about as many laughs as the aftermath of a train wreck. The movie itself is a different kind of wreck, and were it not for the deplorable Norbit, would easily grab the crown of being the worst film of the year.
So, why has Justin been in a coma? We learn that when he was a 12-year-old kid back in 1986, he was a champion breakdancer. Even back then, he had a crush on the lovely Jennifer, and while trying to perform a particularly difficult dance move in order to impress her, he fell off the stage and suffered a massive head trauma. His parents (Debra Jo Rupp and Christopher McDonald) have kept him alive all this time in his comatose state, but are starting to be pressured to pull the plug now that it's been 20 years since the accident. Miraculously, Justin awakens just in time. Unfortunately, he still has the brain of a 12-year-old, even though his body has aged to that of an adult. At least, the movie wants us to believe he has the brain of a child. The way Jamie Kennedy portrays Justin, it seems more plausible that he has the brain of a mentally challenged alien from Mars who doesn't know how to fit into human society. He hooks up with his childhood friends, including aspiring inventor Darnell (Miguel A. Nunez, Jr), overweight meter maid Hector (Aris Alvarado) and Asian office drone Aki (Bobby Lee). They want to win a big upcoming dance competition for a chance to win a big money prize so that Justin can pay back the medical bills his parents have been forced to endure the past 20 years. There's also the romantic subplot between Justin and Jennifer, as Justin tries to rekindle the flames they once held as kids, and prevent her from marrying the former school bully Kip (Michael Rosenbaum).
Does any of this plot matter? Not really. Kickin' It Old Skool exists solely to make us laugh, and at that it is an appalling failure the likes of which I would not wish upon anyone. There are some hints at cleverness early on, such as when Justin discovers what MTV has become during the 20 years he's been asleep, or when he's visiting a local toy store and sees action figures based on characters from the new Star Wars movies and not the characters he grew up with. After these fleeting glimpses of hope come and go in a flash, the movie gets bogged down in an endless series of unfunny racial gags, stereotypes and childish insults. Judging by the way the adult characters act in this movie, Justin isn't the only person who's been in a coma for 20 years, as everyone who surrounds him also acts like they're just being reintroduced to the world. How else can you explain the fact that the evil Kip acts like a lame parody of every teen bully villain in just about every 80s teen comedy ever made? Perhaps this was intentional, but the movie keeps on stressing that Justin is the only one out of touch with reality. I actually started to pity poor Jennifer, as she was forced to choose between a "man-child" from outer space, or an idiotic bully who still acts and talks the same way he did in the opening scene set in 1986. The way I see it, she loses either way. The only option I could see for the girl is to pack her bags and move to a town where the men don't act like complete morons. When the movie informs us in its epilogue that Justin and Jennifer went on to be married, I couldn't help but picture her sitting in a therapist's office a couple years later, talking about what a total mess her life has always been.
It's a popular belief that for every good movie, there's a bad version that attempts to tell the same story. This is the bad movie version of 13 Going on 30, a sweet and likeable romantic comedy from a couple years ago that handled a similar plot of someone from the 80s being transported into the present and trying to rekindle a relationship with someone from their childhood. The way the character was transported into the present day was much less believable, but it didn't matter, because the characters were much better and the dialogue was funnier. Kickin' It Old Skool is the lamebrained brother of that much better film. Because it can't think of anything funny to do with its characters, it throws a bunch of 80s references into its dialogue and hopes we'll laugh. It even has some cameos, many of which exist simply for the sake of being a cameo and nothing more. Alan Ruck, best known for playing Matthew Broderick's friend Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, appears as Justin's doctor early on. There's also the seemingly required cameo by David Hasselhoff that every bad comedy needs to have. The cameo itself is bizarre to say the least, but at least holds the second moment that actually managed to make me smile. Everything is so depressingly mundane and below average about this movie, we start praying for the slightest bit of inspiration. The movie itself even looks uninspired. First-time director Harvey Glazer shoots the movie with a muted and washed out look that makes the entire movie look like an amateur student film rather than a theatrical release. The actors seem lost and confused, almost as if they're wondering right along with us why anyone would think this material was funny.
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