Well, I did it. I had heard about how bad this movie was and I went down to the Borders Books & Music and bought it. After having turned it on and shut it off on at least 10 successive occasions, I finally made it to the end tonight. You see, every time I fired it up I thought, "The rest of it can't possibly be as awful as the part I just watched. They can't possibly insult the viewer's intelligence any more than they have." The filmmakers proved me wrong each time.
The script was clunky, the photography is badly framed and poorly shot, and much of the film just doesn't make any sense. Also, there isn't a single sequence the conclusion of which you can't see coming from a mile away- come on, of COURSE Johhny's "side" was going to win the impromptu football game when he has one hand shackled behind his back- and his girl is the prize! And Johnny Walker strutting down the Main street of his staid, middle-American town dressed like he's on his way to a Gay bar on Cowboy Night?! How ELSE would his straight-laced family react than with shock, indignation and disgust? As to the actors, Uma is lovely, Downey is Downey (and I admit is pretty good in his standard hopped-up sidekick role, especially in the motel scenes,) but Hall seems completely uninterested in what he's doing. He really acts as if he didn't really want to do this film, in spite of the fact that he DID want a vehicle that would break his Brat Pack Geek-in-Chief image. I felt sorry for him. He was really cute, but that was it. His character, Johnny Walker, speaks to a crowd of having embarrassed himself towards the end of the picture. To me, it seemed that Hall delivered those lines with utter conviction, and I'm not surprised. If this were on my resume, I'd deny it. Hall has, of course, gone on to a viable and even admirable career. I guess it's really true that you can't keep a good man down, even if he makes such a potentially suicidal career choice as this film. It's a testament to the man's drive and determination to succeed that he left trash like this far behind him and kept working.
Another gripe I have: screenwriters Zacharias and Buhai wrote the original "Revenge of the Nerds," so they ought to have known what would work in a Youth comedy. Apparently they forgot.
The two worst aspects of this film, however, were these: first, it was unbelievably boring (and a bad movie that is boring is the worst bad movie of all); secondly, the lampooning of corruption in collegiate football is a viable topic and it could have worked if the script had been decent, the story been told in a logically plotted arc, Bud Smith hadn't directed and Hall had acted like he cared (and not mumbled his lines as if he were auditioning for the first time at a Junior High School's offering of Romeo and Juliet.) I give this ludicrous waste of my time a 1.
The script was clunky, the photography is badly framed and poorly shot, and much of the film just doesn't make any sense. Also, there isn't a single sequence the conclusion of which you can't see coming from a mile away- come on, of COURSE Johhny's "side" was going to win the impromptu football game when he has one hand shackled behind his back- and his girl is the prize! And Johnny Walker strutting down the Main street of his staid, middle-American town dressed like he's on his way to a Gay bar on Cowboy Night?! How ELSE would his straight-laced family react than with shock, indignation and disgust? As to the actors, Uma is lovely, Downey is Downey (and I admit is pretty good in his standard hopped-up sidekick role, especially in the motel scenes,) but Hall seems completely uninterested in what he's doing. He really acts as if he didn't really want to do this film, in spite of the fact that he DID want a vehicle that would break his Brat Pack Geek-in-Chief image. I felt sorry for him. He was really cute, but that was it. His character, Johnny Walker, speaks to a crowd of having embarrassed himself towards the end of the picture. To me, it seemed that Hall delivered those lines with utter conviction, and I'm not surprised. If this were on my resume, I'd deny it. Hall has, of course, gone on to a viable and even admirable career. I guess it's really true that you can't keep a good man down, even if he makes such a potentially suicidal career choice as this film. It's a testament to the man's drive and determination to succeed that he left trash like this far behind him and kept working.
Another gripe I have: screenwriters Zacharias and Buhai wrote the original "Revenge of the Nerds," so they ought to have known what would work in a Youth comedy. Apparently they forgot.
The two worst aspects of this film, however, were these: first, it was unbelievably boring (and a bad movie that is boring is the worst bad movie of all); secondly, the lampooning of corruption in collegiate football is a viable topic and it could have worked if the script had been decent, the story been told in a logically plotted arc, Bud Smith hadn't directed and Hall had acted like he cared (and not mumbled his lines as if he were auditioning for the first time at a Junior High School's offering of Romeo and Juliet.) I give this ludicrous waste of my time a 1.