Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Happy Birthday, Foywonder, you glorious bastard! I hope someone gives you some hard liquor to help erase the brain cells where today’s film is stored. You deserve a break.
The wrong movie was called FROM HELL.
A musical romantic comedy starring two non-actors who came in first and second on a reality game show, from the director of SHE’S ALL THAT and BOYS AND GIRLS, and written by the person responsible for SPICE WORLD. Geez, how could this movie possibly suck? FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY is guaranteed to go down in history right alongside CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC as one of the worst musicals of all time.
As many bad movies I’ve paid to see, this was one of the few times I actually felt embarrassed buying a ticket. Let’s be honest for a second. I’m not exactly this movie’s target audience. After all, I’m not fourteen years old and I don’t have a vagina. Also, I’ve never watched American Idol. What little bit of the show I’ve seen has come from tuning in early to watch 24. Unfortunately, having to endure a few minutes of teenage girls squealing while a bunch of wannabe singers engage in the act of what I call “power wailing” (Why do these people constantly feel the need to overpower the audience with their lungs at least once in every freakin’ song?) is a small price one must pay in order to enjoy the Jack Bauer Power Hour. Regardless, while everyone else in the country went to see THE HULK, I paid full price to see FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY.
Now let’s make a couple things perfectly clear. This movie has absolutely nothing, AND I MEAN NOTHING, whatsoever to do with the series American Idol. Apparently the producers of FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY are such unimaginable cheapskates that they actually wanted to capitalize on the success of American Idol without paying the producers of that show for the rights to use the American Idol name in the title or the movie itself. If that wasn’t ridiculous enough, Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini, the winner and first runner up of the show’s first season, don’t play themselves but play two fictional characters who just happened to be named Kelly and Justin.
Okay, so FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY has nothing to do with American Idol and Justin and Kelly don’t actually play themselves. So what the hell is it about, you dare ask?
Basically, FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY has a plot straight out of an 80’s teen sex comedy only with a PG-rating and lifeless song and dance numbers. Tell you what. Before we jump into the plot (what little there is of it) let’s break down the film’s one-dimensional characters.
Kelly – She’s a struggling singer from Texas who gets coerced into going to Florida for Spring Break by her two best friends, Kaya and Alexa. Umm… That’s about all there is.
Kaya – She’s the movie’s token black character. Umm…
Alexa – She looks like the lost Hilton sister and speaks with a Texas twang so thick it would make our current President envious. She’s a superficial, scheming, manipulative, backstabbing bitch…but with a good heart.
Justin - He’s a college student who pays his way through school by staging a variety of Spring Break party events along with his two best friends, Brandon and Eddie. Umm…
Brandon – He’s a hunky party boy who’s always getting in trouble. Just imagine Matthew Lillard’s personality trapped in the body of an MTV Spring Breaker.
Eddie – He’s a computer nerd looking to meet up with a woman he met on the internet. He wears a Gilligan hat throughout the film and the actor playing him seems to be trying to channel David Cross.
The razor thin plot is basically comprised of five separate storylines, none of which is the least bit entertaining.
Storyline #1 - Justin and Kelly meet and are instantly drawn to one another for no other reason than the script requires it. Will they end up happily ever after?
Storyline #2 - Alexa, for whatever reason, wants Justin for herself and embarks on a scheme to keep Justin and Kelly apart. Will she succeed or fail and learn a valuable lesson in the process?
Storyline #3 - Kaya meets up with a hunky Latino waiter and strikes up a romance. Unfortunately, Kaya shoots her mouth off to his boss and gets him fired. Will the hunky Latino waiter get a new job and forgive her?
Storyline #4 - Brandon keeps making money with his Spring Break endeavors but there’s a running gag about this female cop who keeps fining him for various violations. Will it turn out that the female cop is actually a hot babe looking to make it with a complete poseur?
Storyline #5 – Eddie is looking for his internet girlfriend but keeps getting into a series of allegedly comic misadventures that causes him to miss meeting up with her. For example, he lies out in the sun too long and develops horrendous sunburn on the front side of his body; he gets invited to play a game of volleyball and ends up falling into the net. Will he meet up with his internet love and keep the audience in stitches in the process?
My personal favorite bad movie moment from the film is when Kelly’s wannabe boyfriend from Texas shows up. He immediately goes at it with Justin but before a fight breaks out, Brandon steps in and comes up with a way of settling things. The next thing you know, they’re having a mini-hovercraft race where they have to do a loop around this floating ball several times and toss small balls into the back of the other’s boat. Then they come back to shore and the person who landed the most balls in the other’s boat wins and gets Kelly. It’s like something out a really bad episode of Saved By The Bell. And then only after this scene plays out does Kelly bother to tell the two that that there was and never will be anything between her and the wannabe boyfriend from back home. Thank God they didn’t try to settle things with a knife fight!
Also, since this is a PG-rated movie, this is the tamest Spring Break I’ve ever seen. At no point does anyone ever get drunk and while you occasionally see character’s holding an alcoholic beverage or seated with one in front of him or her, never do they actually drink it. Hell, they even find a way to make a whipped crème bikini contest family friendly.
But at the end of the day, this movie is a musical. While I’m hardly the right person to be judging a musical since I’m not much of a fan of the genre, I do feel confident enough to come right out and say that the song and dance numbers in FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY are quite simply abysmal and the transitions from dialogue to song feels awkward and forced. Musicals should have a natural flow to them. The songs in a musical should accomplish one of two things – either advances the story via song or help give insight into a particular character via song. FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY can’t even get this right. The majority of the songs are just there for the sake of a musical number and the few songs that seem to fit the storyline don’t resonate because the storyline is so flimsy nothing could prop it up. Of course, it also doesn’t help that all of the movie’s songs are these homogenized pop songs and power ballads. Melodically, they all sound the same. And they suck!
Good Lord, one of the scenes has Justin and Kelly on a boat ride singing this bland love ballad about being in their lover’s arms. Problem is, he’s steering the boat and she’s sitting on deck about five feet away from him. They’re not even embracing nor have they even so much as held hands yet so why are they singing a song about embracing one another? Hell, they’re not even looking at each while singing it. Ugh!
Later on, they actually let Kaya sing a solo while dancing with her Latino boyfriend but since she’s nothing more than the film’s token black character she only gets to sing a quarter of a song as the film quickly fades out and heads back to the antics of the Caucasian characters. For crying out loud!
The only song and dance number that has any life to it is Alexa’s solo if for no other reasons that it’s obvious the young lady playing her has actual dance experience and because the song actually seemed to be designed to tell us something about her character’s frame of mind. Virtually everyone else in the film dances like they’re auditioning (and not getting the job) to be a back-up dancer for some boy band.
Actually, the musical highlight of the movie is the film’s big song and dance finale featuring the entire cast performing a combination pop/hip hop version of “That’s The Way I Like It” that is so astoundingly awful it’s almost impossible to not burst into laughter. Unfortunately, that’s the only smile I cracked while enduring this mess of a movie.
And in case I haven’t stressed it strong enough, every song in the movie is badly lip-synced. Granted most movie musicals are lip-synced but in this one it is painfully obvious that the songs were studio produced and added in later. Sometimes their lips don’t match and many of the songs feature back-up vocals but unlike more professional productions, they don’t even have any of the background people acting as the chorus. I’m sitting there wondering where the hell those other singing voices are coming from. It’s all so awkward, unconvincing, and downright amateurish.
God, this whole movie is just a total amateur hour. The acting is amateurish. The songs are amateurish. The choreography is amateurish. The screenwriting is amateurish. The directing is amateurish. The editing is amateurish. I wouldn’t be surprised to know that even the catering on this movie shoot was amateurish. The whole movie just has the look and feel of a TV movie that was produced fast and cheap. What am I saying? This movie was produced fast and cheap and its already scheduled for a video/DVD release just six weeks from now. There is simply no good reason to justify the existence of this movie other than cheap ass producers looking to make a quick buck. Seeing as how there were only five other people in the theater I’m guessing they won’t make their money back at least not until the movie hits video store shelves. FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY symbolizes a whole new level of Hollywood greed run amok.
Well, I suppose the producer’s should take heart that these two teenage girls walking out of the movie were commenting about how good it was. Like I said, I’m not fourteen and I don’t have a vagina. Also, I’d like to think I actually have some taste in music. This is a movie that opens with the single worst rendition of “Vacation” I’ve ever heard. If The Go-Go’s ever hear this version of their hit song they’ll probably kill themselves just so they can spin in their graves. I swear it’s actually worse than Britney Spears’ butchering of “I Love Rock’n’Roll.”
FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY isn’t as painfully awful as say Benigni’s PINOCCHIO or KANGAROO JACK if only because the movie is just so damn slight to the point of non-existence. Also, I was able to find a way to amuse myself during the group musical numbers. I began to notice that no matter where they were or what day it was the supporting dancers, who were just supposed to be other random Spring Breakers, appeared to be the same people. There was this one girl with red hair (and I mean anime red hair) who was there for every single dance number. Doing that made getting through some of the musical numbers a little easier.
Still, I understand exactly why the studio wouldn’t screen the film ahead of time for critics because it’s easily one of the year’s worst. Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini have no business acting. He’s better than her but that’s not saying anything since she couldn’t even act her way out of a pre-torn wet paper bag. A better title would have been FROM VACANT TO VAPID because that pretty much describes how they come across on-screen. You’ll get a new appreciation for Frankie and Annette after seeing these two stink up the screen. Hopefully there won’t be a FROM RUBEN TO CLAY in the future because I’m not sure the world is ready for a romantic musical comedy about a 300 pound black man and a scrawny DJ Qualls look-a-like. Still, they’d probably produce more sexual chemistry than Kelly and Justin could.
Okay, I’m done. I came. I saw. I suffered. Now if you’ll pardon me I’m going to see THE HULK. God knows I’ve earned it.
Thanks, man, and seriously... enjoy the day.
"Moriarty" out.
