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50If you have nothing more stimulating to do on a Friday night, Underclassman could provide the entertainment--not enlightenment--you seek.
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50If you saw "21 Jump Street" back in the '80s, or any of a number of shows featuring cute and cuddly cops, you pretty much know where this flick is heading.
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40Yes, it's really silly, and no, you won't remember a thing about it the second it's over, but adults looking for fast moving, non-violent fun that kids might actually enjoy could do a lot worse.
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40Some fairly standard shenanigans ensue, and when the clichéd high school culture clash stuff stops, there's clichéd cop movie stuff going on.
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40Marcos Siega's direction is well-paced, but writers David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg haven't brought anything sufficiently fresh or original to a formula plot to allow Underclassman to rise above the level of a mildly diverting video rental.
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38There's little that's special about Underclassman, certainly nothing that Murphy and Eddie Griffin haven't done better in movies far funnier than this.
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38Utterly generic.
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30Nick Cannon, playing an L.A. cop who goes undercover as a prep school student, provides the few sparks this wan action-comedy can muster.
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30So far-fetched as to make "Kindergarten Cop" look comparatively austere.
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25Underclassman doesn't even try to be good. It knows that it doesn't have to be. It stars Nick Cannon, who has a popular MTV show, and it's a combo cop movie, romance, thriller and high school comedy. That makes the TV ads a slam dunk; they'll generate a Pavlovian response in viewers conditioned to react to their sales triggers (smartass young cop, basketball, sexy babes, fast cars, mockery of adults).
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What's remarkable is how absolutely every character in the film is a movie cliche.
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25A remedial comedy for idiots.
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25The only hint of professionalism comes from Cheech Marin as Cannon's boss, who at times seems to be acting in a different movie.
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25Less an original product than a shoddy tribute to other mediocre cop movies.
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25That sound you hear is from jet engines gassing up, about to zoom Underclassman to DVD-ville.
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25Grade Underclassman an "Unacceptable effort," and "D" for derivative.
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25The loserville teen comedy Underclassman is like a student project sloppily cribbed from other kids' notes -- kids who have seen "Rush Hour" and still can't get over how funny it is to stick a noisy black guy in a distinctly nonblack setting.
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20Its star, who injected such life into the surprisingly unformulaic "Drumline," is adrift in a sea of cop-movie clichés, and Siega's party-to-go direction hews more closely to his music-video beginnings than to his critically noted "Pretty Persuasion."
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20Conceptually, Underclassman is the stillborn spawn of "Beverly Hills Cop" and "21 Jump Street." Except its star, Nick Cannon, possesses neither the biting cool of young Eddie Murphy nor the sullen mystery of Johnny Depp. And the script, by David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg, is breathtakingly bad.
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20The latest bit of damaged goods offered up in the Miramax clearance sale, Underclassman plays like the longest episode of "21 Jump Street" ever made.
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12Saved from total puff only by the obnoxiousness of its star, who seems to be laboring under the delusion that he's the next Eddie Murphy.
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10Almost comically unambitious, Underclassman seldom tries to be funny, and never even attempts to be original.
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British bliss czars, the doughnut-loving LAPD, and bitchin'-hot Spanish profs, no matter how many, how fat, or how bitchin' hot, can't make up for easy double entendres and zero character development.
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0Once in a great while -- usually late August -- a movie comes along that's so lame, it doesn't deserve a bad review. It deserves a war-crimes tribunal. Ladies and gentlemen, Underclassman is that special film.
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0The inconsistencies and continuity errors are staggering.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 6
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Mixed: 0 out of 6
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Negative: 4 out of 6
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JodiF.10
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Roy10
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JayM0Just plain bad.