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63Directing Annapolis is Justin Lin, whose previous feature was the irresponsible high-school comedy thriller "Better Luck Tomorrow." This second movie is more his speed.
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Compellingly reserved and inscrutable at the start, Franco starts to lose us by the second hour, when his character's still not showing up for roll call on time, and isn't charismatic enough to bring us over to his side.
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50Packing in enough cliches for a dozen movies, this drama about a sensitive young man trying to achieve his dreams via the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis will best be enjoyed by the generation unfamiliar with "An Officer and a Gentlemen," "Top Gun" and any preceding boxing movies.
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50The result is two competing films, one about a failure's struggle to succeed in the Brigade Championships, the academy's boxing tournament, and the other about a quitter redeemed by military discipline. In the hands of director Justin Lin, the two story lines don't altogether merge.
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50A formulaic, predictable and yet reasonably likable picture.
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50It's really just "Rocky" in gleaming dress whites.
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50A hopeless if harmless boxing picture whose principals just happen to wear uniforms outside the ring, Annapolis is set in a U.S. Naval Academy where no one ever seems to attend class.
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50This isn't as much a movie as it is a recipe for a cinematic casserole in which the ingredients are clichés and rip-offs.
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50Any resemblance (except qualitatively) to "An Officer and A Gentleman" is strictly unaccidental.
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50The underdog story doesn't miss a cliche, even though it never figures out whether it's a boxing picture or a military drama.
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50It wasn't shot in Annapolis and doesn't have an original thought in its head. Other than that, Annapolis is a fine film.
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50Like so many disappointing movies, it's peopled by performers who do their damnedest to make the whole thing work.
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The best things about this numbingly predictable service-academy drama are its talented leading men.
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50James Franco and Tyrese Gibson scowl and strut and should make the hearts of teenage girls all atwitter, and that's about the only audience that won't see most of the punches telegraphed well in advance.
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42At a time when movies, even from Hollywood, are finally turning their eyes to conflicts abroad, Annapolis seems conspicuously myopic and reactionary in its denial of the world outside campus, though a movie this formulaic wouldn't pass muster during peacetime, either.
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40Annapolis succeeds only in the difficult mission of making charismatic actors like James Franco and Tyrese Gibson seem bland and surprisingly unsexy.
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40Often laughably overwrought rehash of "An Officer and a Gentleman," ekes out enough of a subtext on competition to qualify as a non-fiasco.
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Franco is a refreshingly offbeat screen presence and in lighter moments boasts an appealing smile. He may be someone to watch, but too bad there's little room for emotional spontaneity - acting, in other words - in a rote Hollywood drill such as this.
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40May be a good showcase for James Franco, who's in every scene, but it's a disappointing choice for director Justin Lin.
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38It is the anti-Sundance film, an exhausted wheeze of bankrupt cliches and cardboard characters, the kind of film that has no visible reason for existing, except that everybody got paid.
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The Navy will no doubt like what it sees, yet a project such as this should impart some sense of the times we live in.
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38A record number of movie cliches are strung together for the otherwise forgettable boot-camp drama Annapolis.
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Sir, no, sir.
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38Guaranteed neither to offend nor delight.
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30Annapolis has enough material for an exciting trailer. But that's all the movie really is: a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot that culminates in a single tepid kiss.
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30The only impressive thing about it is the monotony and thoroughness with which it replicates cliches from older, better movies and hammers them into pop alloy to an up-with-me beat beat beat of its musical score.
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25If Annapolis is not the worst movie to date of this still-young year, it is certainly the most hackneyed, as well as the most depressing.
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20Best never to have left dry dock with this one.