Kickin' It Old Skool (PG-13)
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This ostensible comedy may be a new depths-of-hell low in the Emmanuel Lewis filmography, but for star Jamie Kennedy it’s par for the coarse. Combining the appalling infantilism of Son of the Mask and the dork entitlement of Malibu’s Most Wanted into a perfect storm of celluloid agony, Kennedy plays an ’80s breakdance whiz who awakens after a 20-year coma (now that’s comedy!) to reunite his old crew. Of course the hottie he loved back then (Maria Menounos) adores his idiot-manchild ways; of course she’s still hooked up with his snotty rival (Michael Rosenbaum, detestable beyond the call of duty), who gets knee-slappers such as calling Kennedy’s Asian-American and Hispanic crewmates “rice” and “beans.” (Other gags concern bitchy black baby-mamas, dollar signs as Jewish symbols, and me-rikey-flied-lice dialect humor; if the movie were a human being, it would be a bellowing ex-jock who wields “post-racial” like his lawyer’s business card.) The only tolerable part of director Harvey Glazer’s subhuman farce is the climactic dance-crew step-off, choreographed by the one and only Adolfo Quinones, a.k.a. Shabba-Doo. The rest is strictly a Shabba-Don’t--or, to borrow the hero’s description of his so-called life, a “big, soggy piece of...shit-cake nobody wants!” Word. (Jim Ridley)
Review by Jim Ridley
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