Starring Jamie Kennedy, Vivica A. Fox, Debra Jo Rupp, Maria Menounos, Michael Rosenbaum
Written By: Trace Slobotkin, Josh Siegal
Directed By: Harvey Glazer
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Buy on Amazon.com

I remember seeing the preview for this movie and thinking it looked fairly entertaining. I mean, how often do you get to see a breakdancing movie with Lex Luthor? But, I have this thing where I can’t stand Jamie Kennedy and pretty much everything I’ve seen him in makes me want to punch him in the face (metaphorically speaking, of course) so I avoided the movie in the theaters. And you know what? I’m glad I did.

Actually, to be fair, I enjoyed the first half of the movie. The opening credits were great 80s music over a montage of our young hero Justin’s room, filled with He-man, Transformers, and yes, even Go-Bots figures. And I suppose that’s why I like the first half. The movie starts off as a fairly good-natured comedy with a lot of totally rad 80s references and music, and if there’s one thing people my age love, it’s the 80s nostalgia.

Well, the plot involves a young breakdancing prodigy who falls offstage and goes into a coma for 20 years. When he wakes up, he’s stuck with the mind of a 10 year old from the 80s in a modern day 30 year old man’s body (on a side note, I’m a little confused about the actual ages they say they were 12, but exactly 20 years later they say they’re 30. Or maybe I missed something). There’s some fun fish-out-of-water stuff, like when Justin’s mom (Kitty Forman, no less!) turns on MTV for him, and he complains that the TV is broken… because MTV is supposed to have music videos, and the channel he’s watching only has a bunch of women crying. Uhm, yeah, unfortunately, I pretty much just gave away one of the funniest jokes in the movie. See, while the first half was good natured and entertaining, it still had the problem where most of the jokes fell completely flat.

But then, somewhere in the middle, Kickin’ It randomly becomes a bad teen grossout comedy, with countless jokes involving vomit, pissin’ and fartin’, and learning how to properly grope women, among other painfully unfunny nonsense. I don’t think I laughed once throughout the latter half of the movie.

There’s a lot of stuff in this movie that makes no sense whatsoever well, one element is funny because it didn’t make no sense, and I’m referring to a completely bizarre and random David Hasselhoff cameo but it’s like the writers took every bad comedy clich they could find and threw them into the movie, regardless of whether or not they actually fit in with the plot. For example, Aki, one of Justin’s breakdancing friends, is attracted to a fellow office worker. But she says he has, at most, 2% chance with her. And then we don’t see her again until the climactic dance-off, where she’s suddenly in the front row cheering Aki on. And then, according to the text blurbs at the end, they apparently got married. Uh, okay then.

And yes, this movie is absolutely as clich as a comedy can get. There’s the fish out of water, the boy-loses-girl-to-jerk-but-girl-really-loves-boy triangle, the aforementioned climactic dance-off, a lot of stereotype-related humor… the list goes on and on. I could go on badmouthing this movie, but frankly, what’s the point? All I can say in its favor is that it had some nice 80s nostalgia and it actually didn’t make me want to punch Jamie Kennedy in the face. Go figure.

Features:
Deleted scenes

Audio:
ENGLISH: DD-EX 5.1 CC
SPANISH: DD-EX 5.1
FRENCH: DD-EX 5.1

Video:
Widescreen 2.35:1 Color

Subtitles:
English, Spanish

Favorite Scenes: The Hasselhoff cameo, Justin’s confusion over MTV and Darth Maul/Jar Jar Binks toys
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 108 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: