This took about and hour and a half to
get wound up and going, with a bunch of teen sculling lads emboiled in hot
water over their heads.
Someone is
murdered (on the slim chance you'll go see it, I will spare the details) and
someone gets the blame. Then someone doesn't want the blame, and someone else
gets all upset about it and some slacker friends who literally come out of
nowhere ride in to help save the day and someone else lends a hand and then
there is a mental hospital, some drool, and some fireworks and sailing off into
the sunset.
In the
Did-you-knows department, did you know 3 presidents of these US were in fact
members of this secret society, of which I am talking about, The
Skulls?
Joshua Jackson,
teen flavor of the year, apparently, even though he is 22+, is the Kid from the
Poor Side (but with principles) who gets the Skullery-made invite. Not likely,
but they have their reasons, or we would not have a story. And just when I was
about to give up on it, guess what? I got involved, and it settled down just
like they finally got all of the watered down ethanol-gas mixture* out of the
tank and were running straight premium.
Lots of
ivy-covered ivy leaguers and stuff thrown in for decoration. People need to
learn to tighten up the character list and down-sprawl. Cool war room. Lots of
oars, and stuff. Nice filming job, ok editing. Quality production all the
way.
It is PC, to be
sure; the line "if it is secret, and elite, it must be bad", is the
signature "oooooh" line. I assume that the young noble black man
questioning the intentions of the secret society would have as much trouble
with it if the elite people were "people of color", but that remains
and shall remain to be seen.
Paul
Walker, who plays the hard-nosed, silver-spoon, pugilistic power-monger-progeny
Caleb Mandrake, was Phil Deedle, of Meet the Deedles, one of the weirdest teen
flicks ever. No trace of deedliness here, though. He is so rich, he can afford
to be in technicolor.
And what I would have done different in The
Skulls would be in the writing - making the secret society very secret,
starting out immediately with the suicide (murder) of a reporter investigating
the secret society, having the friend of the dead kid also be an investigator
for the campus paper, and have him discover the secret society is implicated in
this as a murder not a suicide, and then we discover the reporter is in
the society too, and he gets the blame pinned on him, and we take it from there
as written, except to get rid of the slacker kids who don't do anything but be
a plot device which is a shameful use of slacker kids. Where the HELL
did they get a Panasonic DVC pro laptop editing system, anyway? Those are veddy
expensive.
Another Saturday afternoon at the
movies.
|
|
| *Ethanol mixes with water, but gas
does not. When you add ethanol to gasoline, water will then mix with the
gasoline. In a high humidity state, like LA, the gas will absorb a lot of water
moisture from the air, and lower the octane rating of the gasoline. That is why
cars sometimes run so crappy on ethanol - it is water soaked. And some
disreputable service stations water their gas down intentionally. Other than
that, ethanol-gas is just fine. Just thought you should know. |
