#25 From Justin to Kelly (Wes)

From Justin to Kelly

This list has thrown a lot of really crappy movies our way, some of which I may have ended up accidentally watching on my own, some I would have never been aware of if it wasn’t for this list. Our next movie was definitely one of the latter. Like Popstar. the last teen pop drama we had to watch (see here), a spring break love story featuring two former American Idol stars really isn’t the sort of movie that I would ever consider watching under any other circumstance. Unfortunately it was next in our list and I had no other choice, so would From Justin to Kelly defy all my low expectations? Only one way to find out….

Conservative Texan waitress Kelly (Kelly Clarkson) heads to Miami with her BFF’s Kaya (Anika Noni Rose) and Alexa (Katherine Bailess). Here in one of those spontaneous dances where everyone knows all the right moves the spring break is famous for, she meets up with Justin (Justin Guarini), who is there with his best buds Brandon (Greg Siff) and nerdy Eddie (Brian Dietzen). Kelly and Justin quickly fall for each other, but neither of them wants just a fling, so they are both cautious. Can their love survive all the singing and dancing that spring break seems to involve? Will Eddie ever meet the girl he met on the internet in real life? Since when was spring break so PG?

If there’s one piece of cockney rhyming slang that I’ve never really understood, it’s syrup of figs (wig). As often as I’ve that someone had an unconvincing syrup, I’ve never actually known what syrup of figs actually is. Well thanks to this movie and it’s God awful syrupy ballads, I actually decided to Google it. It turns out that a syrup of figs is a type of laxative, which seemed strangely appropriate as a massive, steaming pile of shit was exactly what I thought about the songs in this movie.

The songs are nothing but banal fluff, which is about the level I’d expect from an American Idol spin-off movie. To give the writers some credit, they did at least attempt to try to make some of the songs different from each other, including one where the characters sing their lines in some horrible opera or PG rated version of R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, but they may as well not have bothered. The songs all blend into one horrible, forgettable mess, seemingly missing the point of a musical, in that there isn’t a single song you’d even remember half an hour after you’d finished watching it, let alone still be humming it weeks after having watched it.

The big problem with this movie isn’t actually the songs though (nor is it the poor choreography that can best be described as “awkward uncle at a wedding dancing”). At least they may appeal to American Idol fans, so that alone would make their target audience happy. The problem is that this film is almost as though Marge Simpson wrote it in the classic Simpsons episode where she attempts to eliminate violence from Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. It so non- offensive that it’s just plain dull.

This is a tale of such wholesome spring break partying, that it would make John Belushi spin so hard in his grave that he could be considered the first perpetual motion machine. Even Andrew WK, Rodney Dangerfield and Caligua hijacking Mardi Gras, Oktoberfest and Rio Carnival and bringing them straight to Florida along with all of the revellers and the contents of Hunter S Thompson’s medicine cabinet, couldn’t save this dismal excuse for a party. This is the only movie that features a margarita party held by the only Americans who aren’t aware that prohibition ended in 1933.

I can only imagine that when writer Kim Fuller was told that having written Spice World, that at least they’d never be able to write a script worse, his response was “hold my beer”. Movie vehicles for pop stars are often badly written, if only for the fact that the makers know the fans will most likely go and watch it regardless, for example Mariah Carey's Glitter (see here), but From Justin to Kelly takes this to a new level.

This is a movie so dull that even a scene with some sort of hovercraft basketball jousting game that could have come straight out of Takeshi’s Castle (or maybe It’s a Knockout), just doesn’t seem fun. Even the predictable hovercraft crash is so safe and PG that it has all the drama of that time that I lost my pen, then remembered pretty much straight that I’d put it behind my ear. The only positive thing I can say about the script, is that it had a Sideshow Bob gag that I quite enjoyed.

For a non-professional actor, Justin Guarini tries his hardest, and isn’t absolutely terrible, but Kelly Clarkson seems to have taken her acting classes straight from the legendary sweeping extra in Quantum of Solace (if you’ve not seen him, check him out here, he’s incredible). I would love to describe her acting as an enthusiastic amateur, but “Only there because it was in a contract that she signed to be on a television talent show” amateur would be way more accurate.

Like Popstar, this movie was never made with someone like myself in mind as the potential audience, but I can only imagine that this movie could only ever be enjoyed by only the most hardcore Justin/Kelly fan or the least unfussy teenage girl. This movie is less Animal House and more Bear in the Big Blue House and the best way I can sum up this movie is with one of the tweets I shared whilst watching this movie with Colin:

This movie is making me wish that Coily the Spring Sprite from A Case of Spring Fever existed “no more spring(break)s!

(for those of you that have never seen A Case of Spring Fever, I recommend you watch the brilliant MST3K riffing of it here)