Director: Robert Iscove
Genre: Comedy, Music, Romance
The next movie in our list is a
musical and regular readers of our blog will know that I absolutely hate
musicals with a passion! They are just
so creepy! If you were walking down the
street and all of a sudden someone burst out into song, then a group of people
joined in with that song and then the whole group performed a perfectly
choreographed dance routine, you’d be freaking out. I know if it happened to me I would need a
clean change of underwear and a few sessions with the local shrink, (I actually
put my hatred better in my blog about our #34(b) movie; At Long Last Love, (see review here))!
So our next movie, Justin and Kelly (2003), is already off
to a bad start in my eyes, but matters were made even worse when I discovered
it stars the winner and runner-up of 2002’s American Idol!
I’m going to sound like an old fart, but the music scene for
the last 15 years has been bland, turgid and lacking any cutting edge. It’s been wave after wave of manufactured pop
divas, boy bands and auto-pitch. Shows
like American Idol just keep churning out more and more of these acts and with
similar shows, like The X Factor, continuing this trend, there seems no end in
sight.
It’s fair to say then, that I am not a fan of the 2 stars of
this movie, Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini, heck I hadn’t even heard of
Justin Guarini until I typed his name out a few seconds ago!
But was I being unfair?
Was it right for me to be dreading watching this movie? Was it a yes from me?
Kelly Taylor (Kelly Clarkson) is a ‘singer’ at a run down
Texan bar and normally performs to an audience of 2, (almost as many who bought
this movie). Therefore she doesn’t take
much persuading when her friends, Kaya (Anika Noni Rose) and Alexa (Katherine Bailess) suggest going to Spring Break in Florida.
Meanwhile, 3 friends known as the Pennsylvania Pussy
Posse are also heading to Spring Break.
They consist of Justin (Justin Guarini), token jock Brandon, (Greg Siff), and generic nerd to make up the clichéd trio, Eddie,
(Brian Dietzen). They are
trying to organise a whipped cream bikini contest, (a thought provoking piece
of drama, as I’m sure you’ll agree).
Almost immediately Justin bumps into Kelly and they fall in
love. Literally 6 minutes into the
movie, (but don’t worry dear reader, they manage to string this out for another
80 minutes!). This coincides with the
first song of the movie, the first dance routine and the first incident of me
slipping into a coma.
Soon after their first encounter, they meet again, this time
in the ladies bathroom, where Justin has gone to hide after a hoard of girls
wanted wrist bands to the bikini contest, (really?). After helping Justin to escape from the
bathroom via the window, Kelly decides to take her chance and writes her number
down on some tissue paper and throws it out of the window. Unfortunately it lands in a puddle and Justin
is left with a nasty mess in tissue paper, (not for the first time I believe!).
Desperate to get Kelly’s number, he runs into Alexa and
tries to get the number from her.
Unfortunately Alexa also has her sights set on Justin and gives out her
number instead of Kelly’s. It’s not long
before Alexa gets to put her plan into operation as Justin texts ‘Kelly’s’
number asking her out only for Alexa to text back ‘Kelly’ is not interested….
Will Alexa’s plan succeed?
Will Kelly get with Justin? Will
Kelly manage a dance routine without being exactly 1 step behind?
Watch From Justin to Kelly to find out! Actually, don’t bother and here’s why:
If this story seems familiar to you, it’s probably because
it has been done a thousand times before.
There is nothing new on offer here and there are many movies which have
done this storyline far better. It’s boy
meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins back girl but without any clever twists
and turns along the way which elevates an average film into a good film.
The jokes are as flat as the cast’s pitch and generally
centre on Brandon dicking around. He
tries to inject some American Pie type humour into the movie, but without the
crudeness or humour. In fact this has to
be the tamest Spring Break I have ever seen and I never realised Spring Break
could be PG.
Guarini’s acting is actually OK. He does walk around with a smug look and as
the b@stard son of Yahoo Serious, but generally lines are delivered
convincingly and if I had any interest in the movie, I might actually care if
he ends up with Kelly or not.
Clarkson on the other hand seems to be trying to win
Madonna’s, ‘Singer Who Can Not Act for Toffee’ award. She is so wooden that a lump of 2 x 4 in a
bikini could have put on a better performance.
There is no emotion, lines are rushed and monotone. Hell, actually you could have replaced her
and Guarini for Hacksaw Jim Duggan, (now there’s a movie I would happily pay to
watch).
The rest of the cast are just filler and pad out the
movie with further will they / won’t they get together. It’s hard to invest any time in caring about
what happens as the characters are just a bunch of tired clichés with about as
much depth as a piece of paper. They are
only in the movie to provide backing singing and dancing.
The dances themselves are uninspired and generally involve
some poorly worked arm flapping and side steps.
They look more like people trying to cool their mouths down after eating
a hot chilli, than dance routines.
The songs are generic and lifeless and not a single tune
stands out. Guarini and Clarkson can
sing, (or rather use a lot less auto-pitch than the rest of the cast), but does
this movie showcase their ‘talent’?
Definitely not.
So was it right for me to dread watching this movie? Definitely!
It’s a million percent no from me!
This movie is just a shameless attempt to cash in on the
winner and runner-up on American Idol.
When you see that the production company behind the movie, 19
Entertainment, are also the production company behind American Idol, then the
pieces begin to fall into place.
Back in my Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever blog, (see review here), I mentioned that movie studios usually ask video games makers to produce
a game as a tie-in to their movie. What
the games makers will usually do is take a generic platform game that they have
been working on and will shoehorn the characters into the game. This is why movie tie-in games are usually
quite lousy.
Exactly the same has happened in From Justin to Kelly. Some execs from American Idol have asked their
production company to make a movie to cash in on the winner / runner-up. That company has then just taken a generic
boy meets girl story and shoehorned Clarkson and Guarini into it. This movie was not made for them, it was made
to make money from them. This is why
this movie is so lousy.
From Justin to Kelly was never going to be for me, I don’t
like musicals, I can’t stand pop music and I’m not a fan of Kelly
Clarkson. This is probably a movie for
those, back in 2002, who voted for Clarkson or Guarini and who wanted to see
more of the people they had been following and showing an interest in for
several weeks.
For the rest of us, From Justin to Kelly is From DVD Player
to Bin.
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