93. Underclassman (2005)

It’s a bad sign when the first scene in a film about a wise-cracking black undercover cop is a very poorly directed rip off of the first scene in Beverly Hills Cop. This film wants to be Beverly Hill Cop so badly it’s quite painful to see them fail. The director even goes on record to say they were trying to emulate that style in the ‘making of’ DVD extra. ‘Trying’ is most definitely the word.

When a student at an elite private high school is killed, our bike cop hero, Tre (Nick Cannon), is sent in undercover to catch the killer. There’s the obligatory preppie gags as Tre tries to fit in. A nerdy water boy who’s cool really but nobody notices, who is also the white kid trying to talk ‘black’ and making a fool of himself. A caricature authoritarian headmaster. Some montage sports scenes of Basketball (that Tre naturally excels at) and Rugby. A sexy Spanish teacher (Roselyn Sanchez), who takes a liking to Tre’s roguish charm. Rich jocks as prime suspects. Couple all that with police Captain Delgado (Cheech Marin) doing the whole tough on the outside boss routine, a pedestrian car chase, and a highly predictable plot. This is so heavily packed with clichés it more closely resembles an old arcade game than a serious attempt at writing for the cinema.



The writing comes from the authors of The Girl Next Door and Van Wilder with a ‘story by’ credit going to Nick Cannon. While this feels like a Cannon vehicle, considering the script-writers better previous work and Cannon’s lacklustre performance, I think it’s Cannon that is dragging his own vehicle down. In it’s favour the humour is gentler than many other films. You won’t find any big gross outs here, and that’s refreshing. The main problem I found was that the jokes simply aren’t that funny, and Cannon lacks any of the charm required to make you want to laugh. I’d quite happily have seen him shot in the second act.



When the film stops trying to be funny it only manages to deliver functional dialogue and recycled ideas. Gems like, “Sometimes hunches are how cases are solved” are delivered with embarrassing sincerity. Despite being incredibly formulaic it still manages to chuck in a slightly confusing plot hole during the finale. Director Marcos Siega, who has mostly worked in television, does a standard job with the material. He could easily be replaced by a legion of other decent directors without anyone noticing. In all fairness to him, the script is so bereft of potential he’s done well not to make it as boring as it must look on paper.

Performance wise Nick Cannon is annoying. He clearly wants to be funny, with his big arm gestures and over the top delivery. It’s very much a case of style over substance, and it’s unlikely he’ll ever be a major star. Cheech Marin (of Cheech and Chong fame) and Kelly Hu (X-Men 2) are the only other notable actors due to their previous work. Both are on autopilot, and capable of more given the right material.



I’ve come down pretty hard on this quite frankly because it’s easy to. There’s nothing terribly offensive about this movie. Its major crimes are the unoriginality and a lot of very poor jokes. When the peak of intelligence is the ham-fisted painting metaphors with a paintball game it really is time to call it a day. No surprises it made number 93 on the IMDB bottom 100 with a score of 2.6 out of a possible 10, from 1,526 votes (as of 1st Feb 2007). Ultimately it has already left the bottom 100 because it was competently made, tells a story, and had one funny joke in it. Despite all its flaws it is at least a watchable time waster.


So far:
Best film – Ator the Invincible (1984)
Worst film – The King and I (1999)