Watching Bad Movies - School Dance

First, let me explain how I got suckered into watching this movie. The trailer floated across my YouTube and I decided to watch it because Dave Chappelle and Wayne Brady told me "Black actors." The trailer featured Mike Epps, Kevin Hart and Luenell being generally funny. I said, "this is like Bad Teacher, but with black comedians. I could watch this." I got played. They were heavily featured in the trailer but it was a movie about the kids that were in the first 15 seconds. They hustled me into watching another bad movie.

First off, the film takes place in a high school, but most of the kids don't look like high school students, at all. Spanky Hayes has to be like 30 by now, how am I supposed to believe he's a student? One of the main students in the film had more tattoos than The Game, and The Game has a lot of tattoos. They should have just adjusted this to be a story about a college freshman instead of a high school freshman. You can tell whoever wrote this hasn't been in school for a long time either, Nick Cannon.

The story revolves around Jason who is a freshman who wants to join the Rangers dance/rap group. They're called a dance group, but they were clearly trying to get a record deal. He joins their dance circle on the first day and gets pantsed. We spend the next 80 minutes with so many jokes about him being uncircumcised, having a small penis and not hitting puberty yet, that I have to mention it was overkill after the first three minute monologue about it, but for some reason we needed like 10 more of them.

For some reason Jason still wants to be friends with the dudes that derobed him him in front of the whole school. They tell him he can't join unless he brings them the panties of the hottest girl in school. It's gonna be that kind of movie. Nick really hasn't been in school for a long time, has he? They demonstrate by having the tattooed adult student, who is obviously stoned, pull out a pair of panties, that really don't look like something a high school girls should wear. Also, Amber Rose is also a student at this school.  Girls did not look like that when I was in high school.

This is funny, leading woman, Anastacia, is played by a 25 year old woman who happens to be a member of the Debarge family. I mention that because she's supposed to be a freshman, and is clearly not. She's also supposed to Mexican, but I'm pretty sure it's well known the DeBarge family is French and Black. She's also lacking the Mexican accent. Oh, wow Wilmer Valderrama is her brother and Geroge Lopez is her dad.

Anyway, school lock in. They play 7 minutes in heaven. I have to admit I've been to several lock ins and parties during my time in high school. Never played that game or spin the bottle. It was pretty lame honestly. Is Nick Cannon writing fan fiction? New Boyz are in this? Wow, this really came out in 2014. Kevin Hart and Lil Duval's gang is having a shootout, Jason get's shot protecting Anastacia. There's a truce. Race relations healed. Story over.

Here comes the complaints. Half the cast is high during the filming and during the outtakes that play during the credits you can visibly see people getting mad about it. If Katt Williams and Mike Epps can show up sober, why can't you? I don't really care if people smoke weed or not, but when it's obvious you're screwing up your job, you probably need to scale back.

My biggest issue is they made this a high school story and filled the high school with a bunch of students that are old enough to have sired the main cast. They just wanted to get all of their friends in. There's a ton of black and Latino comedians in this who only appear a few times. George Lopez shows up just to make jokes about black people, to even out Kevin Hart's jokes about Mexicans. Just adjust the setting to college instead of high school and it works out.

The film is also just trying to put on new groups because in reality, the Rangers are a real rap group that may or may not be signed to Nick Cannon's label. They tried to capitalize on the New Boyz but it came out at the end of 2014 and nobody cares anymore so why were they such a big deal? Kristina DeBarge is also a singer who may or may not be signed to Nick Cannon's label. The only really random cast member was Brock Samson. I've got no idea why he was in it. Also, he's the only white person that didn't need a helmet. But, he's Brock Samson, probably just walked on set. Who was going to tell him no? Most of the acing was pretty bad throughout, but that's okay. The kid who played Jason was actually pretty good but I just want to punch him in the face for some reason.

Here's something nice. The whole movie was about sex. Entire thing, get laid or you are a nobody. Then there's a moral at the end, in high school everyone is a liar. Nobody was getting laid, they all lied. Nobody got called out on it they just said "yeah me too," but it turns out most of the boys (all except 1) were afraid of the girls and none of the girls were having any of his sexual harassment, because that's what it was. It's a nice moral about how majority of the people talking about how much they get laid, are lying. That doesn't change with the exit of high school either, demonstrated by adults continuously striking out as well. You had a good message Nick, I'll give you that.

It's a bad movie, that can't be argued. However, if you take it at face value you'll get some laughs out of it. The comedians basically run short stand up routines over whatever the current subject is and those are usually funny, you also get Affion's impressions. There's maybe 3 singing and dancing numbers. They play the New Boyz up as huge stars and that's kind of funny. Just don't expect a theatrical masterpiece and you'll laugh a little.

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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