** (out of ****)
Starring Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Katherine Bailess, Anika Noni Rose, Greg Siff, Brian Dietzen, and Jason Yribar
Directed by Robert Iscove & written by by Kim Fuller
2003 PG
Upon which Shakespeare play is “From Justin to Kelly” based? Enter three boys on one side and three girls on the other, like “Love’s Labour Lost.” Among the girls there is one treacherous, one chaste, and one wise. Among the boys is one looking for love, one already in love, and one avoiding love. We have a couple that falls in love on first sight like “Romeo and Juliet,” we have a girl who’s out to sabotage that love like Iago in “Othello,” and we have a guy who has sworn off commitment like Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing.” We have multiple couples that pair off by the end of the movie, some intended to be high comedy while others are more broad. The trickery done via cell phone text messaging is a clumsy update of Desdemonda’s handkerchief. And, yes, there’s a mistaken identity and a comeuppance. Like so many of Shakespeare’s comedies, we see young people give up on the idea of quick love for fun and gradually accept the idea of commitment. But instead of Dead Willie’s depth and witty wordplay, we get trite dialogue, forgettable pop songs, wooden acting, and a pointless and confusing chase on hovercrafts.
“From Justin to Kelly” stars Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini, the winner and runner-up of the first “American Idol” television season. I’m not going to discuss whether “American Idol” is a “phenomenon” or one of the seven signs of the end of the world. “From Justin to Kelly” is an obvious attempt to cash in on “American Idol” and to market attractive, talented singers to a larger audience. Is that really any worse than all the other movies, musicals or otherwise, that sell themselves by putting good-looking actors on their posters? Turning singers into actors is not a flawed principle, just a difficult one to get right, resulting more often in middling Elvis Presley movies than in “From Here to Eternity” and “The Manchurian Candidate.”
Are Justin and Kelly good actors? Not yet, but there’s hope. Are they good singers? I guess so, although they’re not really my style. The songs in “From Justin to Kelly” are mostly pseudo hip-hop bubblegum that appeals to pre-teens. (I wish I could be superior and say how “deez jamz” are a sign of moral decay, but I’m sure I listened to crap when I was nine.) Does their bland whiteboy pop offend you? Then don’t buy it and, if you’re a Nielsen family, don’t watch “American Idol.” That’s how capitalism works. Stop whining.
But adolescent Top 40 fits “From Justin to Kelly” because the movie is a pre-teen fantasy about spring break, warm-weather romance, and using the word “party” as a verb. It’s also a surprisingly innocent, even sweet piece of fluff, in which a week without adult supervision does not include sex, drugs, smoking, or drunkeness. Like a beer commercial, we see plastic cups of alcohol all over the place but hardly anyone drinks from them. The kids even keep their music down, and when everyone finally does start partying, which equals a huge song-and-dance routine, the moves are at worst vaguely suggestive. Most of the beautiful young people in “From Justin to Kelly” are on spring break to fall in love, not get some action. The only guy who is just trying to get laid (although he never uses those words) is openly treated as a clown. The girl who wants to be a seductress is shown as lonely and petty. When someone wants to look dangerous, she uses the word “hell.” I can’t bring myself to heap condemnations on something so innocent, although there are plenty of people who despise “From Justin to Kelly” for precisely that reason. It’s an inept movie, but a harmless, good-natured one. It puts everything but its heart in the wrong place.
Director Robert Iscove and writer Kim Fuller have taken a paper-thin plot, no worse than the average high school musical, and given it the look of a music video, complete with sun and surf, pools and palm trees, bikinis and volleyball. “From Justin to Kelly” could probably be chopped up into three-to-five minute musical numbers and shown on MTV. The setting is a Florida beachfront during spring break, where apparently no ugly people are allowed, and Kelly and Justin have fallen in love at first sight. Several things are keeping them apart. First Justin has lost Kelly’s cell phone number. Then there are the machinations of Kelly’s jealous friend, played by Katherine Bailess, with one of the cutest obviously phony Southern accents I’ve ever heard. Then there’s Justin’s best friend (Greg Siff), who insists that one fine girl is the same as the next, and that our young Romeo should just move on to the next honey. Lastly is Justin’s own reputation as a party animal, clashing with Kelly’s virtue. He assures her those days are gone, but she is skeptical, especially as her so-called friend keeps pushing them apart. There’s also a surprisingly good idea for a subplot, although badly executed, in which another of Kelly’s friends (Anika Noni Rose) begins a romance with a local boy (Jason Yribar). He fears that she only wants him as just other part of the vacation, like a free continental breakfast, and not as real love. Along the way, Justin and Kelly pine for one another, in song, Bailess dances and reflects on her treachery, in song, and Yribar and Rose sing and dance a little too.
These characters are all surface. Their dialogue spells out exactly what they want and what they are thinking, when the plot needs it, with an almost total lack of ambiguity. When Clarkson’s friend is finally forced into a confession, she spells out all her motivations in a perfect little twenty-second psychoanalysis. The performers are singers and dancers trying their hands at acting for the first time, but maybe no real actor since Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed could salvage “From Justin to Kelly’s” corny humor. The movie does have one inspired piece of dialogue, in which Kelly repels a boy by saying “I thought we were just friends,” to which he responds “but can’t we be friends who go on dates and mess around?” And don’t get me started on the various logical flaws that pop up along the way, like the one cop who is everywhere on the beach at once, or how Kelly’s job allows for spring break, or whatever the hell Justin seems to be doing for a living. At least director Iscove keeps things more-or-less moving on the sunny side of tedious.
“From Justin to Kelly” is not mean-spirited. There is nothing in it to suggest that it is being ironic or anything other than sincere and well-meaning, in its clumsy, amateurish way, about young love. And when there’s so much sarcasm, cynicism, and nastiness in this world, that counts for something. Would you want your ten-year-old watching it? No. But should you forbid your ten-year-old from watching it? Probably not.
Finished September 3rd, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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