Director: Ed Decter (This is his directing debut, so you should probably clap

or some such thing.)

Cast: DJ Qualls, Zooey Deschanel, Eliza Dushku, Eddie Griffin (Luther), Lyle Lovett, Ross Patterson, Rachael E. Stevens, and a lot of cameos that I don't quite remember as it was late and I hadn't much caffeine yesterday when I saw it. Oh yes. Gene Simmons, he was in it. There we are then. And Tommy Lee, him too. Oh, and Tony Hawk of skateboarding fame. But I can't remember anything else, really.

Here's the weekly premise from upcommingmovies.com guru, Greg Deam Shmitz: 'After a few years of being the 'uncool kid', a high school student (Qualls) gets himself expelled, and even ends up in prison. While there, his cellmate, Luther (Griffin) gives him some tips on how to remake his image, so he can start again at a different high school, reinvented as the 'cool kid'. Things go great, until one of the bullies who made his life living (heck) ends up at the new school too...' (Lovett plays the father of Qualls' character; Dushku plays a cheerleader).

I say it goes something like this:

1. Geek wants to be cool
• a) Geek gets imprisoned for a freak accident
• b)Geek makes friends with a prison inmate
2. The Schooling of the geek.
• a) Sad prison inmate friend teaches kid how to be cool
• b) Kid is cool.
• c) Kid gets transferred to another school.
• d) Kid kicks bum of 'Big Man on Campus'
• e) Kid becomes new 'Big Man on Campus', but with a decidedly humanistic view about everyone and everything
• e1) i.e.; kid helps geeks out of trashcans, makes everyone play nice, gets people to go to
  
  the school football games, wears a kilt in a raveheartesque fashion, etc.
• f) Kid gets girl.
• g) 'Yay-ness' is had.

And there we are then.

I rather liked this film because it reminded me of one of my friends. Given that said friend has never had rubber breasts duct-taped to his chest, or bits of his anatomy twisted off by an 80 year old librarian, so maybe not exactly.

My point is this is the sort of film where the general feeling is thus; we have all been there, everyone has at some point felt that they don't quite fit in.

This film has earned itself five out of five and a for good measure because I rather like that smiley. It was a good goofy romp. If you're in the mood for a rather good laugh, (Not to mention a very good recreation of the big fight scene in Braveheart 'They can
take this game, but they can't take... OUR FREEDOM!!!.') by all means, go see it.

Jedi Jade

30.05.02 Front Page

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