Loose-Loosies: Five Memorable Nineties Teen Flicks Based Upon Old Classics

“No idea’s original”…“there’s nothing new under the sun.”

This holds true from biblical days of Ecclesiastes 1:9 thru Nas outtakes from 2001.

To describe Shakespeare’s “mistress’ eyes” in Sonnet 130 or title Sting’s second album.

Artists must first learn to steal from past pilferers before becoming great themselves.

In some cases, these examples may be subtle to the point of undetectability.

In others it can mean paying public domain homage to things more overtly.

Teen movies were red hot commercially, even to a degree critically, in the 90’s.

More than a few of these flicks deployed a technique that became a popular trend, building contemporary teen tales upon the bones of centuries-old, time-tested stories from before the era of still photography.

Despite the historic weight assigned to canonical texts, many were their era’s equivalent of a popcorn flick. So what better way to shed the pretense for those not versed in English Lit, than flip the script thru the filter of a 90-minute nineties high-school flick, where stakes are low, fun is prioritized and drama co-mingles with campy.

Clueless (1995)

Source Material: Jane Austen’s Emma (1815).

Elevator Pitch: The Aerosmith video girl from The Crush tones down the crazy and cranks up the cutey in a star-making-performance as Cher, a motherless child turned den mother to her friends, disheveled teachers, widowed father, or former step brother.

Kiddie City: Westside Los Angeles, Beverly Hills specifically

Casting Clique: Alicia Silverstone, Stacy Dash, Donald Faison, Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy, Jeremy Sisto, Brecken Meyer, Dan Hedaya, that bald guy from Princess Bride, plus the redheaded lady from Look Who’s Talking who played Mrs. Geist.

Hot Lines: “Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel. I doubt anybody would miss you.” — Melvin “Mel” Horowitz, “He’s a disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holding friend of Dorothy, know what I’m saying?”-Murray Duval, “Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there’s no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value.”-Cher, “Oh how fabulous. Getting Marky Mark to take time from his busy pants dropping schedule to plant trees. Why don't you just hire a gardener?”-Cher, “the PC term is hymenally challenged”-Dionne

Dusty Dialect: “As If”, “He’s a total Baldwin”, “Haiti-ins” (pre-Fugees), “Phat”, “a total Betty”,

Iconic Fits: Too many to list. There’s entire subgenre of nostalgia and fashionistas dedicated to Clueless. But if you are going to go most iconic, clearly, it’s this.

Trash Picks: Picking Tai pre-makeover or Travis’ crusty vibe is too easy. Why did this movie act like initial object of Cher’s misconstrued affection, Christian, was a Beverly Hills Dapper Dan? Her Dad had dude pegged with that “What's with you, kid? You think the death of Sammy Davis left an opening in the Rat Pack?” blast.

Cameo Candy: Director Amy Heckerling is underrated for reasons that seem pretty obvious: misogyny and the lack of critical respect for how hard it is to make classic comedy. Heckerling has made at least three: Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Johnny Dangerously, and Clueless. She also has hits I may not personally love, but made boatloads of money, in European Vacation and the Look Who’s Talking(s).

Heckerling gets her first (only) onscreen cameo here, in the long-running grand Hitchcockian filmmaker tradition, with the matchmade-teacher-wedding scene.

B.I.G. “This Ain’t Back In The Days” Energy aka Things That Would Not Fly In Today’s Landscape:
1A) The law-school-step-brother ending up with his bratty-high-school-step-sis-turned-sweetheart exists somewhere on the mercurial twentieth century “why were we all okay with this?” Woody Allen problematic-onscreen-romance chart.

1B) Damn near everything that co-star Stacey Dash has said and/or done since she became a card-carrying, gun-toting, finger-wagging, Fox-mouthpiece Republican.

Most Valuable Player: I remember reading two reviews before going to see Clueless at then-Movies-10-in-Somerdale (thanks for the ride, Kelly) in Summer ‘95. One ended with “Alicia Silverstone is pure gold”. The other “Alicia Silverstone is the cinematic equivalent to a ray of sunshine”. Both quotes let you know whose star we left theaters feeling like was in ascent. How were we to know it would be her apex?

Rookie Of The Year: 18-year-old Brittany Murphy hits the ground running in her first speaking role.

Weakest Link: A timeless youth movie should have an of-the-time soundtrack that stands the test of time itself. This one isn’t bad. But this is the mid-nineties. Rock wasn’t dead yet. Hip-Hop was cresting. R&B was cruising. The internet hadn’t swallowed up monoculture pop music staples on MTV or FM radio. Legacy acts from prior eras that lived past 27 and had their act together were still young enough to have their fastball on a live performance level. And many of the best soundtracks played at high-school house parties or inside dorm rooms came out around this time: Pulp Fiction, Above The Rim, Dead Presidents, Dazed and Confused, Waiting To Exhale, Singles, Judgement Night, Natural Born Killers. I feel like this one could have been better to match the moment achieved by the film’s cast, script, and director.

Time-Tested Certified Banger: Between Radiohead being a one-hit-grunge-wonder on “Creep” and OK Computer remaking them into critical hipster-darlings for the new millennium, came a surprisingly satisfying middle passage on second album The Bends. If “Fake Plastic Trees” doesn’t get into this teen-summer-blockbuster, there’s a chance the next phase never happens. Plus Coldplay can’t graft “Trees”/”High And Dry” plaintive style to start their more-piano-driven-and-boring Y2K-U2 career. Lose some, win some.

High Wuddermarks aka Best Time Capsule Collectable: When having a hard time making a keeper pick, you might wanna use a computer to do the analytics.

Gone Too Soon aka We’ll Mourn Ya Till We Join Ya: Poor Brittany Murphy passed away at 32 under odd circumstances related to pneumonia, possibly from a mold infection ingested from the house she lived in with husband Simon Monjack, who followed into an early grave via pneumonia six months later.

Unbearable Whiteness In B(oogi)eing: Rollin’ With “Uh, No Please”.

Wudder Mark: A

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Source Material: William Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew (1592)

Elevator Pitch: A popular teen girl played by a Nickelodeon kid can’t date until her socially-conscious anti-social older sis, played by Save The Last Dance girl, does. Enter teen Aussie actor soon-to-be-world-famous to perform the first flash-mob set to film.

Kiddie City: Somewhere in the Seattle Metropolitan Area (I’ve never been there) with the school in Tacoma.

Casting Clique: Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, Larry Miller, Allison Janney, Andrew Keegan, Daryl “Chiil” Mitchell, David “Joe Isuzu” Leisure, Gabrielle Union.

Hot Lines: “Romantic? Hemingway? He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers.”-Kat spitting historic literary venom, “I know you can be underwhelmed, and you can be overwhelmed, but can you ever just be, like, whelmed?”-Chasity with an existential question for the ages, “I like my Skechers but I love my Prada backpack”-Bianca explaining to Chasity the difference, “Do you really wanna get all dressed up, so some Drakkar Noir-wearing dexter with a boner can feel you up while you're forced to listen to a band that, by definition, blows?”-Kat keeping it real, and of course the whole poem letting Patrick Verona know how she really feels.

Dusty Dialect: This movie mighta had a hand in “jiggy” not graduating to next century. Fine by me.

Iconic Fits: In retrospect, Julia Stiles’ get-ups in this could have alternatively been called 10 Outfits I Hate Wearing A Bra Wit. As a young man back then also feeling socially conscious, I was here for it.

Trash Picks: NAH, MON…

Cameo Candy: Boston alt-mall-rockers Letters To Cleo are all over this one, headlining Seattle shows from the high-school-prom to Club Skunk.

B.I.G. “This Ain’t Back In The Days” Energy aka Things That Would Not Fly In Today’s Landscape: Jules’ flashing-teacher-to-stave-off-detention move wouldn’t be approved.

Most Valuable Player: Many will say Heath Ledger. That’s fair. I have him as runner-up to Stiles’ Kat, a strident character that coulda gone horribly wrong in less capable hands than Stiles in pre-Yale peak.

Rookie Of The Year: This is Susan May Taylor’s first theatrical speaking role. Who? Exactly. I’m giving it to Gabby in her first role even though her second movie, also on this list, was in theaters three months earlier.

Weak Link: Nobody’s outright bad or gravely miscast in this…but I’d be open to Larisa Oleynik alternatives.

Time-Tested Certified Banger: There’s oddly lots of late-seventies/early-eighties funk in this one (“Word Up” by Cameo, “Dazz” by Brick, “Atomic Dog” by George Clinton) for a predominantly pasty teen movie from 1999. There’s also a B.I.G. hit in this. But it’s Heath Ledger stopping soccer practice with a big-band rendition of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” that wins.

High Wuddermarks aka Best Time Capsule Collectable: Seattle is on the still-need-to-see-before-R.I.P. list of U.S. cities. Among many spots to visit may be the high-school they filmed this, which makes most college campuses look like favelas.

Gone Too Soon aka We’ll Mourn Ya Till We Join Ya: Heath Ledger, who we lost tragically at 28 while rumored to have become too “engrossed” in his role as Joker, like Tupac as Bishop in Juice, or Robert Downey (who lived but lost his twenties and his freedom temporarily) as Julian in Less Than Zero.
The truth is probably a lot more complex like it was in those cases, but unlike watching The Dark Knight now with the heavy burden of his drug-overdosing-in-Mary-Kate-Olsen’s SoHo loft he’d been staying and leaving behind a daughter Matilda with former partner Michelle Williams, watching young Ledger hamming it up in 10 Things I Hate About You feels like a welcomingly light respite.

Unbearable Whiteness In B(oogi)eing: Has anyone who hasn’t shown themselves to be a good dancer become more famous for their dancing in movies than Yung Julie during the late nineties?!? For the record, 10 Things Table Dance>>>Save The Last Dance.

Wudder Mark: B+

Class Act (1992)

Source Material: The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (1882)

Elevator Pitch: Late-80’s/early-90’s rap-n-dance duo Kid N’ Play continue their co-starring film foray that started so successfully with 1990’s House Party, in a Twain-meets-Trading-Places high-school screwball comedy that ranks beneath House Party but above all sequels in the Kid-N-Play late-20th-century cinematic cannon.

Kiddie City: Los Angeles…San Fernando Valley specifically.

Casting Clique: Christopher “Kid” Reid, Christopher “Play” Martin, Karyn “Hilary Banks” Parsons, Tommy from Martin, Doug E Doug, Art Weingartner from The ‘Burbs, Loretta Devine, Meschach Taylor, Bruh-Man from Martin, Pauly Shore, Pooty-Tang.

Hot Lines: “Yo hold up, my man Shakespeare was rappin’ about poppin’ in some girl’s coochie?!”-Blade, “Honey, have you ever wondered about our son’s sexual preference?”-Duncan’s Dad “I didn’t know he had one”-Duncan’s Mom, “See you later Datitty, I mean, Damita”-Duncan, “Mom, dad, this is my friend Blade Brown”-Duncan “Blade, that’s your name?”-Duncan’s Dad “Dad, is that yours?”-Blade

Dusty Dialect: To name all the outdated slang and vernacular in this would be longer than the guadiest wedding registry shopping list. This movie came out 31 years ago, the oldest movie represented here. A small sample of the antiquated terminology and dated references: jimmy-hats, def, hype, Buster Douglas, Chuck Woolery, absolutely everything that comes out of Pauley Shore’s mouth, or for further video evidence just peep their Who’s-On-First-homage for further hilarious cues.

Iconic Fits and/or Trash Picks: In this movie is there a difference? Every look features bold color schemes and wild patterns splattered together, abstract-arbitrarily, like a Jackson Pollock painting fused with the In Living Color opening credits. Is that Play wooing Hillary Banks in a lime-green proto-Chopper-suit? Is that The Weasel starring in Purple Pain? Are leather overalls practical attire while bullying?

Miracle Whip: Play’s truck Lucille (shout-out to BB King)

Ian Ziering/Gabrielle Carteris Award for Grown Folk Perpetrating Teen Fraud: Kid N’ Play had been on a national arena tour with Public Enemy and NWA during the eighties. They had already been to college in House Party II aka “The Pajama Jam” and were approaching 30 when they returned to playing high schoolers in 1992. But damn near everyone in this looked to be in their thirties. That next wave of getting actual teens to play teens onscreen was more of a mid-to-late-nineties thing.

Virginal Vessel: Kid’s Duncan, who even while pretending to be the street-savvy lothario, Play’s Blade, manages to talk himself out of sex until the film’s climax.

Cameo Candy: Rhea Pearlman is a delight here…maybe this put her on the radar for old-white-lady-in-a-black-teen-movie and led to her co-starring alongside Onyx’s Fredro Starr in Sunset Park.

B.I.G. “This Ain’t Back In The Days” Energy aka Things That Would Not Fly In Today’s Landscape: This feels very early nineties in its skirt-chasing, vernacular, sophomoric humor. But it’s so cartoonish as a whole that it’s fairly innocent and probably the least “problematic” by modern standards of the five on this list.

Most Valuable Player: Doug E Doug steals every scene he’s in here. Then starred in Cool Runnings. I’m not sure why he didn’t end up having a bigger career. He got a gig on that Cosby CBS show which kept him both busy plus paid, did a few kids flicks and got pigeonholed a bit.

Rookie Of The Year: No newcomers really present here.

Weakest Link: This is the only Kid N’ Play movie without a hip-hop or Def Comedy Jam legend in it. Insert both, edit the unnecessary intro/outro exposition, shave down the Scooby-Doo-esque-museum chase scene, then add a Treach or Busta performance at the rally with a sprinkle of Jamie Foxx or Bill Bellamy in between? Better movie.

Time-Tested Certified Banger: The repetitive title track gets played in this more than “Fight The Power” in Do The Right Thing. B Angie B is not Public Enemy. As MC Hammer proteges go, she may not even be Oaktown 357 or 2 Big MC. Did someone get pumped-and-bumped for this improperly prominent placement, or hung upside down over a balcony, like Suge did with Robert Van Winkle (allegedly)?

Jade is my most underrated R&B trio from this time. All their hits from back then aged like fine wine. “I Wanna Love You” anchors a movie that despite being a hip-hop star vehicle doesn’t have a great rap record that wasn’t previously released in the movie. Shout-out to Monie Love and Lord Finesse regardless.

High Wuddermarks aka Best Time Capsule Collectable: I’d gladly accept any souvenir from the wax museum as a housewarming present.

Gone Too Soon aka We’ll Mourn Ya Till We Join Ya: Refreshingly, most of this cast is still with us with no lingering tragedies. But RIP Tommy, who passed away from a heart attack fairly recently in his still-way-too-young early fifties.

Unbearable Whiteness In B(oogi)eing: It was certainly a bold choice by all involved to turn Kid, up to this point best known for his high-top-fade and/or dancing ability, into a hopeless nerd who can’t learn basic steps or out-shine Pauly Shore on a dance floor.

Was that ultimately a good decision? As a plot device in this, we guess. For their careers going forward? We’re still not sure.

Wuddermark: B

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Source Material: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English translated as Dangerous Liaisons) an epistolary novel by French novelist Pierre Choderlos de Laclos from 1782.

Elevator Pitch: Remember that sexy period-piece drama with Michelle Pfiefer, Glenn Close and John Malkovich? This is that…except about spoiled nineties New York City rich kids while taking the teen movie format to the max with, and oh yeah, we’re gonna have Buffy The Vampire slayer play the Queen Bitch.

Kiddie City: New York City’s Upper West Side, also maybe the Hamptons

Casting Clique: Sarah Michelle-Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair, Christine Baranski, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tara Reid, Nurse Ratchet, Rose from 227, dude from Mighty Ducks and Dawson’s Creek, Swoosie Kurtz.

Hot Lines: “Eat me, Sebastian. It's okay for guys like you and Court to f*ck everyone but when I do it, I get dumped for innocent little twits like Cecile. God forbid I exude confidence and enjoy sex. Do you think I relish the fact that I have to act like Mary Sunshine 24/7 so I can be considered a lady? I'm the Marcia f*cking Brady of the Upper East Side, and sometimes I want to kill myself. So there's your psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud. Now tell me are you in, or are you out?”-Kathryn, “This sure doesn’t taste like iced tea”-Cecille “it’s from Long Island”-Sebastian, “So I assume you've come here to make arrangements, but unfortunately, I don't f*ck losers.”-Kathyrn, “E-Mail is for geeks and pedophiles”-Sebastian, “How can someone so charming be so manipulative?”-Annette

Dusty Dialect: Sassy (magazine), e-mail slander, early-cell-phone-talk

Iconic Fits: All these sets and sartorial selections are lavish in a way that feels totally unreal but suits the mood of the scene, or personality of the character controlling it.

Trash Picks: Selma Blair is often cloaked in little kid clothes, perhaps to signify her mental immaturity or to mask that she’s playing a teen while approaching thirty. Reese Witherspoon’s entire look here is meant to tell the audience that she is a principled prude swimming in one-piece suits among a school of scandalous sharks.

Miracle Whip: Phillippe’s antique convertible Roadster of course.

Ian Ziering/Gabrielle Carteris Award for Grown Folk Perpetrating Teen Fraud: Selma Blair is like 27 here playing 16 in ways that truly strain credulity.

Cameo Candy: Fred Norris from the Howard Stern Show is in this. Yes, you read that correctly.

B.I.G. “This Ain’t Back In The Days” Energy aka Things That Would Not Fly In Today’s Landscape: We’ve got revenge-porn, homophobia, racism, drug-use, rich teens behaving like sociopathic adults with seemingly no adult oversight, a step-sibling-sex-subplot…Any roadblocks you put up will likely get run over. This movie left the teen genre with really no place left to go but blow the whole blueprint up.  

Most Valuable Player: Sarah Michelle-Gellar absolutely crushes. She’s as captivating a young villainess presence as you can possibly be. This was seen as an against-TV-heroine-type bit of stunt casting in the late nineties. But there are some good actors in this movie, including ones that went on to become much more lauded critically in the next millennium **cough**REESE**cough**…but nobody can touch Michelle-Gellar here. She strikes me as someone who coulda had a better career but prioritized happiness. while picking up paychecks, settling into marriage and raising a family with Freddy Prinze. Maybe if she had kept bodying roles into adulthood like she does in this, they might’ve risked becoming one of those our-careers-are-going-in-different-directions Reese/Phillippe cautionary Hollywood divorce tales.

Rookie Of The Year: This was Selma Blair’s first major role so she wins, but only by default. There’s playing an awkward teen and then there’s playing a teen awkwardly with Tropic Thunder Simple Jack panache.

Time-Tested Certified Banger: The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” caps the finale of this movie so perfectly that the song now plays like a coda for the entire decade. It was well worth the literal million-dollar-licensing fee that they had to pay Richard Ashcroft, oops, I mean Jagger/Richards.

High Wuddermarks aka Best Time Capsule Collectable: No doubt that has to be Kathryn’s cross-coke-locket. We’ll skip the soliloquy about not promoting drug use to say I want a necklace like this to carry around my own form of magic dust, Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, to sprinkle on food while out eating at restaurants. I would love to have that jeez-this-piece on South Street to tap out across an Ishkabibble’s Chicken Cheese.

Gone Too Soon aka We’ll Mourn Ya Till We Join Ya: No early casualties but Alaina Reed Hall passed in Santa Monica at age 63 ten years after this movie.

Unbearable Whiteness In B(oogi)eing: Selma Blair’s Secret Society Shimmy is something we can’t unsee.

Wudder Mark: B+ with chance for A- following mandatory school counselor meetings or a bribe.

She’s All That (1999)

Source Material: Pygmalion from Greek mythology b/w Pygmalion a play written by Irishman George Bernard Shaw in 1913 turned My Fair Lady onscreen in 1964.

Elevator Pitch: For those who don’t have the patience to sit thru the three-hour Old Hollywood musical to hear The GOAT Audrey Hepburn speak in a distracting cockney accent while being forced to lip-sync, you might wanna check out this teen 90-minute non-musical version made at the Y2K brink, when Freddie Prince enters into a break-up-bounce-back-bet with buddy Paul Walker over whether he can turn sardonic smarty-arty bespectacled Laney Boggs into the bell of the ball.

Kiddie City: L.A. (the South Bay and Torrance High specifically)

Casting Clique: Freddie Prinze Jr, Rachael Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker, Jodi Lynn O’Keefe, Kevin Pollack, Kieran Culkin, Gabrielle Union.

Hot Lines: “I feel just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. You know, except for the whole hooker thing.”-Laney, “Sometimes when you open up to people, you let the bad in with the good.”-Zack, "One second, you're Zach Siler, class president, stand-out athlete, all-around bad-ass mamba-jahamba; the next thing you know, you're Zach Siler, bitch-boy."-Dean, "You didn't really think I'd leave for All-Star "Road Rules" and still be dating you? Oh, you did? That's so sweet."-Brock

Dusty Dialect: Hacky-Sack (WTSDTA?), The Real World.

Iconic Fits: Laney’s red dress descent is supposed to be the show stopper moment but she looked cute in work clothes or overalls before it so you might not feel the weight of the moment hit, Taylor sells that pink bikini on MTV Beach House dance pod bit, they clearly also put work into the prom’s look.

Trash Picks: Everything that’s supposed to look bad feels telegraphed…but Zach’s letterman jacket feels too on the nose. Lil Kim looks fairly adorable in suburban high-school clothes, but why not do something fun with her while she’s here?

Miracle Whip: Prinze’s Yellow Land Cruiser, tho Pollack’s work van is more crucial to the story.

Ian Ziering/Gabrielle Carteris Award for Grown Folk Perpetrating Teen Fraud: Gabrielle Union was already 27 here in her debut, then 10 Things later this Spring, followed by a starring role as a high-school cheerleader in Bring It On a year after without most noticing she was a decade past teen. She’s now 50 plus, just seen courtside at MSG last week. Still nary a crack upon which to speak.

Virginal Vessel: Laney in glasses, the smart girl we’re supposed to believe is capable of being hoodwinked by the Prom King’s fairly transparent ulterior motivations.

Cameo Candy: Why is Usher in this movie playing a David Silver-like high-school radio/dj host, ironically filmed at the same school 90210 shot their first few seasons.

How and why is Lil Kim here playing a high-school student following around the mean girl villain? There is nine black people on the call sheet for this movie, plus two half Mexicans and one transgendered, which might be more than the cumulative count from Eighties Teen Movie King John Hughes’ entire career.

It would have been cooler if any one of them had anything interesting to do. But representation in ‘99 was almost enough for a Duck Tales “Woo-Hoo!”.

Sidenote: MVP of the prior movie Sarah Michelle-Gellar, early into dating Freddie Prinze Jr in real life at the time, stops in for an uncredited lunchroom cameo. They lived happily ever since (knock on wood) in a 20+-year-marriage despite Scooby-Doo being their last hit. Salute to both of them on some true-success-starts-at-home-ish.

B.I.G. “This Ain’t Back In The Days” Energy aka Things That Would Not Fly In Today’s Landscape: The whole vibe here feels as implausible now as Leave It To Beaver did to us as kids. But that’s a big part of the charm of it now in retrospect. It’s as stress-free quick a watch as it gets if you’ve maxed-out on your appetite for Euphoria darkness.

Most Valuable Player: The leads are fine, Cook is cute and charismatic while Prinze is likably vanilla to center the action around. However, Matthew Lillard was on a heater right after Scream. He carries that momentum into this movie as a volleyball-playing Real World castoff that feels like an amalgamized send-up of many actual young/rich/semi-famous douchebags out carousing in Los Angeles.

Weakest Link: Jodi Lyn O’Keefe is abysmal as the mean girl lead. A career-ending performance. I can’t think of any actresses they could have swapped her out for that wouldn’t have been better option. Jennifer Love Hewitt coulda bought herself two more years playing against type here. Tara Reid. Anyone ever on Charmed or That 70’s Show. Christina Ricci between The Ice Storm and a string of envelope-pushing indie-movie-almost-adult roles. Early Kate Hudson. Natasha Lyonne. Someone.

Rookie Of The Year: Gabby Union knocks it out of the park with a nothing part.

Time-Tested Certified Banger: This soundtrack is a Y2K-headstoned graveyard of recycled pop-rock (“Kiss Me” by Long Bad Forgettable Name), EDM ‘stars’ no one cares about now (Fatboy Slim, Goldie), last-ditch half-assed attempts at regaining relevance by alt-rock acts years past being SPIN critical darlings (Afghan Whigs, Liz Phair), throwaways from LA pop-rap-groups that hadn’t popped yet (Black Eyed Peas pre-Fergie, Jurassic 5), plus tax-write-offs no one knew then let alone have Wiki entries now.

Among all the audible carnage, Rick James’ second-most-overplayed-but-still-stone-cold-classic-1981-hit “Give It To Me Baby” wins automatically, even tho it’s used as Lillard’s theme music for comedic mockery. Any of these studios could have emailed their licensing budget with a chain-mail list of music options and I guarantee I’d have done a far better job of music-supervision with five minutes in a college computer lab than everyone involved in making these five movies. How do you get those jobs, anyway?!

The same holds true for almost every decision made by the Sixers in the NBA draft lottery since Charles Barkley, particularly the drafts that brought us Soft Eyes, Duck Sauce, Peanut Brittle, or Shawn Bradley (but wishing that poor dude a speedy recovery).

High Wuddermarks aka Best Time Capsule Collectable: I’d definitely hang an OG Laney Boggs canvas somewhere over here at the Chateau as a conversation piece at least.

Gone Too Soon aka We’ll Mourn Ya Till We Join Ya: Paul Walker was just getting started here in a memorable role that didn’t naturally fit his screen persona like The Fast And The Furious series and Into The Blue (yeah I said it) soon-after would. Sadly he’d be gone in a car wreck on set at age 40, which somehow was ten years ago already.

Unbearable Whiteness In B(oogi)eing: They have Usher…DJing…watching a synchronized dance. Plus Lillard’s cocaine-is-a-helluva-drug devoid-of-shame disco.

Wudder Mark: B-