The Mod Squad (1999)

Too much of everything

Crappy film

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The Mod SquadThe worst part about employing young undercover cops is they binge drink at house parties and break cover.Thankfully, the covert trio in this action movie are too busy tracking a killer to attend ragers.Opting to work for the police in a new department instead of serving time, Julie (Claire Danes), Pete (Giovanni Ribisi) and Linc (Omar Epps) are trained in the art of infiltration by their mentor Capt. Greer (Dennis Farina).But when Greer ends up on the wrong side of a drug lord's gun, the motley crew must bring his killer to justice.A slapdash adaptation of the groundbreaking counterculture cop drama from the '60s, this 1999 version lacks the social and political undercurrent of its source material. Instead, it's a lifeless and shoddily acted knock-off - similar to the original in name only.Besides, immature undercover officers today can't stop posting on Twitter about being undercover. Red Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

I'm not sure why this has the reputation it does, beyond the fact that it's one more needless remake, and this one wound up starring several people who never graduated to full-on movie stardom. Otherwise, it's no better or worse than most routine remakes of old movies or TV series in recent years. The relative cool (at the time) of the original TV series--which cast ostensible hippies as offenders-turned-undercover-cops--is hard to reproduce, as since then we've had "21 Jump Street" and so forth. Plus the line between "straight" and "alternative" culture is much less distinct than it was back then. But in any case, this movie hardly tries--it just uses the name as an excuse for a routine action movie about hot young ex-perp cops. Supposedly hot, at least. Danes seems like a junior legal secretary, Ribisi acts like a spaz, and Epps is OK but charisma-free. Actually they're all OK, under the circumstances, but none are particularly convincing--just good actors miscast as action heroes. Still, there's nothing particularly obnoxious about this misfire, the way there is about, say, your average Michael Bay joint. It's just mediocre. The packaging is perfectly competent if uninspired. The director's only prior feature was an excellent indie drama, "Johns," and it's really too bad that this flop mainstream crossover seems to have basically killed his career. (He did have a hand in the screenplays for later successes "8 Mile" and "The Fighter.") Actually the brief dramatic aspects here--Ribisi's disillusionment with his parents, Danes with her lying beau-- are decently handled. It's more the action/adventure/comedy angles that fail to levitate, though despite a few silly moments they're not particularly bad. (The funniest moment is a complete non sequitur when Ribisi shows up on the beach with take-out coffee and his recipients have no idea why he got it. Believe me, it's better in context.) Why do certain mainstream movies bomb and get labelled as serious duds, while others that are at least as bad (and/or as financially unsuccessful) get labelled as disasters? It's not always explicable. "The Mod Squad" isn't a particularly good movie. But it's not a particularly bad one, either. Actually it's kinda enjoyable, at least on the level of the routine TV action- series episodes it was inspired by (and which its musical score conspicuously imitates). It's just another so-so would-be franchise-launching film that got branded a dud cuz it landed like one. Maybe it would have been a better idea to parody the source the outdated material, as the big-screen "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky & Hutch" (or "21 Jump St.") did.

The movie was slow, the dialogue between actors/actresses felt "flat" and basically there was no development of the characters in the story.Omar Epps skulks around with a mad look on his face the entire time, pouting and basically looking annoyed with everybody. Danes has no on-screen magic, and Ribisi's character is a goober that nobody would want to hang out with even if they were paid to do so.Throw in the weird scene where Epps has to dance with an old man, and you have what quite possibly COULD BE the worst movie in cinema history.I watched it on satellite (thank goodness I didn't pay for it), and wished I hadn't.Do yourself a favor and go sort your underwear and socks drawer if you need something to do but are tempted to watch this movie when/if it comes on your TV. Awful movie if you ask me, and I generally have something good to say about just about any movie out there.

I had the misfortune to watch this last night on the BBC, I expect I may have been the only viewer. From the beginning there was something quite wrong about the movie, after a few minutes of viewing i managed to work out what it was. THE MOVIE WAS BAD! Not bad in a good way like Wolfpack or a Seagal film just plain old shoddy bad.Why was this made into a movie? I've seen a few episodes of the TV series and thought it was alright but I only saw repeats of that because they made this.I spent most of the film trying to work out what the story was and by the end I was none the wiser. I seem to remember at some point a character, maybe Farina's mentions that the Mod Squad can get in to places regular cops can't. The 'place' turns out to be a 'club', one of the toughest places to get into, maybe it was student night? I lost track of the plot at this point or maybe there was no plot and the movie was just chopped together from various leftovers from other TV series remakes.Was it an action comedy? I don't remember any laughs.Overall this movie lacked the real scene stealing power of someone like Seymour Hoffman as the bad guy. With him Ribisi would have had somebody to bounce off.