Underclassman (2005)

Too much of everything

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

If there is a single most outstanding thing about Hollywood film-making is the insane watchability of even the most wretched projects like UNDERCLASSMAN. If you try to dissect UNDERCLASSMAN then it is an unbearably derivative undercover cop flick which borrows heavily from BEVERLY HILLS COP politics, 21 JUMP STREET appeal and most apparently POINT BREAK's plot. Kathryn Bigelow POINT BREAK is one of the most potent undercover cop flicks in history. Even though it's mot some textbook example that you can derive from. Well, in UNDERCLASSMAN, a huge chunk of the structure and character chemistry was taken from POINT BREAK. The friendship between the young cop and the main suspect, the arrest of some other undercover DEA agent, the red herrings and the analysis of the timeline, it was all transplanted from POINT BREAK. I feel it would it would be right if Miramax paid some royalties to the people who made it.Talented music video director Marcos Siega (Weezer, blink-182) who kicked off with PRETTY PERSUASION, got attached in order to infuse this flick with some life. He failed. So did the screen writing team of Wagner and Goldberg who wrote a great high school romcom THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and seemed capable of refreshing the genre. But even they place very few and far between flourishes in the script.This is film is a failure for all concerned.However, it is insanely watchable. I loathed it, noticed shameless rip-offs, felt ashamed of myself for renting it, but still, I kept watching it, up until the end credits. I must admit that. Siega and the writers made it slick enough to swallow. That is craft I can't deny. And that's about it.

I won't give anything away about the film but it does not deserve the bad ratings it has It's a great film and very funny. Nick Cannon was really good in it. Anyone who loves comedy movies like the Naked Gun movies or the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy should go and see this film Of course I'm mostly talking to people in the UK here as I don't think it's been released yet. I got the DVD from the US and I'm glad I did.. But please don't take all the bad reviews you have seen in papers or on the web because it's a film you will probably like to see at least once. OK it might take some things from different movies in place but everyone does it. For example I was watching Knight Rider season 1 on DVD today and I realised that a clip that they had used I had seen in one of Christopher Reeves Superman movies! so big deal if they took bits from other movies, who cares as long as you enjoy it? Right?

I'm really upset at the rating for this movie? Why so low? I didn't really like Nick Canon(SP?) until i saw Wild N Out, and that didn't really do much for me either, but in this movie he is good. The plot is about Canon, being a bike cop and wanting some more respect. He eventually gets an undercover job posing as a student to try to solve a car/drug mystery. Everyone said that he was a horrible actor, has bad comedic timing, but thats not right. I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It brought you comedy and action, the two prevalent factors in watchable movies these days. Canon has that kind of comedy where he is trying to be funny, and succeeds.

After reading the other comments and seeing that it got only 3 stars, I was not looking forward to seeing this movie. But my 14 year old son and his friend, as well as my 11 year old son, wanted to see it so I took them. The movie was actually much better than I expected. It was an action film that was very exciting, had some good chase scenes, and had good character development that had me rooting for the main character to succeed. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. This is a good movie even for kids as young as 11 if my younger son is any indication. He said he would give the movie 7 stars and my older son and his friend said they would give it 7 or 8 stars. They all liked the action.