Just Kill From Justin to Kelly

Last summer, I became a certified American Idol junkie, a condition that only worsened when Clay Aiken came on the scene in the second season and blew me away. But from the moment I first caught a glimpse of what was in store for Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini’s hastily made movie together, I had a very, very bad feeling. This was going to be one of those movies. A movie you would only see in the theater in order to laugh at it – at all the unintended moments. And J2K did allow many such opportunities. For the most part, it was pretty harmless, though not, I would argue, as thoroughly G-rated as many of the reviews I read made it out to be. There was skin, skin everywhere, hundreds of scantily clad young adults dirty dancing on the beach. And Alexa, Kelly’s conniving friend, doesn’t seem very G-rated to me. At any rate, the movie is rated PG, so I wasn’t really offended by anything in the movie as I was with Just Married. The main thing this movie suffers from is corniness.

For starters, there’s that title. What kind of title is that? It’s just to make sure that we, the public, who are dim-witted enough to see this movie, remember that we have American Idol to thank for it. A girl named Kelly from Texas. A guy named Justin from Pennsylvania. Oooh, they’re really stepping out of their realm of experience for these challenging acting roles, now aren’t they? I suppose the title is a reference to the text messages that Justin keeps sending to Kelly throughout the movie. During this season of AI, we were being reminded what seemed like every two second that those of us with cell phones could put in our votes via text messaging. Sure, there’s a charge, but who cares if you rack up a hefty bill by text-voting 1000 times each week? It’s worth it! The text-messaging battery continues with this movie, and it runs almost like one extended commercial for AT&T, except for one thing – text messaging almost ruins everything. So much for that idea.

With the exception of a couple minutes at the beginning, the whole film takes place on a sunny beach during Spring Break. Kelly’s a shy, down-home kinda gal; she has to be dragged to the fun by her two friends, the snotty guy-magnet Alexa (Katherine Bailess) and intellectual Kaya (Aniki Noni Rose). Justin’s just looking for a good time with his buddies one-night-stand king / con artist Brandon (Greg Siff) and cyber-geek Eddie (Brian Dietzen). Each of the four friends is a cookie-cutter stereotype, and each has a few moments to steal the limelight temporarily. Eddie spends the whole movie trying to hook up with a girl he met in a chat room, Brandon spends it hosting dubious events without a permit and incurring fines from an attractive policewoman, Kaya gets involved with a Hispanic waiter and causes trouble for him. But it’s Alexa who gets most deeply involved in the main storyline.

Justin and Kelly spot each other in the midst of a throng of dancing fools. Somehow, that instant is enough to spark a “connection,” especially from where Justin is standing. He can’t believe his luck when he bumps into Kelly again in the girls’ bathroom while, oddly enough, hiding from a throng of girls. She helps him escape and gives him her number, but alas! It falls in the mud and is rendered unreadable. But hope is on the horizon as he bumps into Alexa. Recognizing her as a friend of Kelly’s, he begs for his ladylove’s number. She complies, or so he thinks – she really gives him her own number. Alexa, for some reason that really isn’t satisfied by her lame explanatory speech at the end, is determined to sabotage this fairy-tale relationship.

The rest of the movie is one mishap after another as Justin and Kelly’s messages get crossed and skewered, but they do manage one successful date before everything goes haywire. Kelly begins by telling Justin what a woman-objectifying jerk he is, then for no apparent reason decides to go out with him. At this point they’ve spoken for maybe five minutes total. They spend the bulk of the afternoon on a romantic boat ride singing about how their love is timeless. Right. This takes the “love at first sight” idea to a new low. Of course, this is pretty much where the movie ends as well, after all the messy stuff in between. Whoop de doo.

The acting in this movie, especially by Justin and Kelly, is pretty darn lousy. The dialogue is atrocious. The songs are hopelessly out of place and overproduced. Just about everything about this movie is a bomb. But it’s a pretty harmless bomb, and it’s actually pretty darn funny if you go into it with the pre-conceived understanding that this is not a quality film. So it’s not a total bust. But before somebody starts working on From Clay to Ruben, they’d better take a good hard look at this movie and evaluate what went wrong. As in, everything. Starting with the title.