Underclassman

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—anytime a movie has to resort to poop jokes in an attempt to pry laughs out of the audience, you know that unless you’re 10 years old you’ve a long movie ahead of you.

In all honesty, Underclassman wasn’t that bad of a film, but it didn’t have anything spectacular to offer that would cause me to remember it or want to see it again. Nick Cannon, who plays the lead role of Officer Trey Stokes, was extremely likable and seems to have a great amount of charisma; however, the sole force of his personality alone was not enough to make a great comedy. He plays a young and reckless bike cop, who is allowed to go undercover in an upper-class private high school in order to solve the murder of one of its students. This is apparently a new tactic that police departments everywhere are adopting—going undercover to solve any and all murders. Trey’s orders are to befriend Rob Donovan (Shawn Ashmore), the wealthy in-crowd alpha male, because he is ostensibly suspected of having something to do with the murder—for the life of me I can’t remember why, which is probably because the filmmakers couldn’t be bothered to craft a solid plot. Nevertheless, Trey enrolls in the school and eventually uncovers some sort of car-theft ring that also somehow involves drugs. Again, the details of the plot are completely ignored, so I really can’t say for certain what the connection is—maybe it’s bioterrorism.

Trey desperately wants to become a detective and hopes to use this assignment in order to prove himself worthy of the position; however, his boss, Captain Delgado (Cheech Marin), insists that Trey is too reckless and that he should use his time in high school to earn that diploma he never got in the first place. I don’t quite understand what this fact implies about our police force—is it really possible to become a detective without ever having graduated high school, much less gone to college?

There were several moments during the movie that made me smile—not laugh or chuckle, mind you—and again, Trey Stokes is an extremely charming character who adds a pleasant tone to the film. The humor wasn’t clever or original, however, so I felt like I was watching a film that was clearly running on autopilot. Obviously the filmmakers were relying heavily, if not completely, upon Nick Cannon’s likeability to make the movie funny, although, as stated earlier, they did resort to some cheesy sources of comedy as well (e.g. poop jokes). They also use the usual “black guy in a predominantly white environment,” look-how-different-these-cultures-are method, which was quite funny the first time I saw it—several million movies ago.

Underclassman wasn’t horrible by any means, but it was nothing I hadn’t seen several times before. I wasn’t writhing in mental agony during the short hour and a half, so it’s not something I would suggest anyone necessarily avoid, but it’s also not something that I would recommend anyone rush out to see immediately. If you enjoy no-brainer comedies, however, then don't miss this one.