Undiscovered

Undiscovered is the type of movie that you can skip entirely and yet still correctly guess exactly what happened in the story, including the pitiful ending. So, needless to say, don’t waste your time and certainly not your money.

Luke Falcon (Steven Strait) is a struggling musician living in New York City, who decides to move to Los Angeles in order to seriously pursue his musical career. As he rides the subway with his brother on the way to the airport, he bumps into Brier Tucket (Pell James), a beautiful model who smiles at him as the train pulls away. Luke takes this to mean that she must consequently be the girl of his dreams and love of his life. So he moves to Los Angeles. The movie then switches focus to Brier, at which point the audience instantly realizes that the two will eventually meet again and fall in love, etcetera etcetera. Brier eventually decides that her success in modeling must be an indication of some inherent acting ability, so she moves to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Unfortunately for the audience, Brier befriends a fellow aspiring actress in the form of Ashlee freaking Simpson, and we are forced to watch Ashlee “act.” That is to say, she basically plays herself. Honestly, it was like watching her horrendous reality show, and as if that weren’t unpleasant enough, the director insists upon a multitude of extreme close-ups of Ashlee’s face every two seconds. All sarcasm aside, however, Ashlee wasn’t all that bad, which is probably as good an indication as any of how terrible this movie was.

It just so happens that Ashlee is friends with none other than Luke from the opening scene, which surprises no one, and the endlessly predictable plot stumbles around while Brier and Luke reacquaint themselves with each other. Since the filmmakers can’t have them fall in love until the end of the movie, they halt the romance by giving Brier a fear of musicians. No, literally. She is fearful of dating Luke because he plays music, as apparently her previous boyfriend was some musician who cheated on her. Nevertheless, since everyone is now the bestest of buds, Ashlee and Brier scheme up a plan to create some buzz about Luke’s music and help launch his career. Their ingenious plan involves hiring an unknown Brazilian model to come to one of Luke’s shows and take a picture with him, which in turn will ostensibly create some hype. Dang, if only every struggling musician had someone behind him to mastermind such a brilliant publicity plan. Inexplicably, the plan works, and enough buzz is generated that Luke snags a deal with Tantra, a reputable recording label with the predictably arrogant money-hungry manager. As Brier feared, however, fame starts to go to Luke’s scruffy head, and he subsequently alienates all of his friends and his brother in favor of dating the snotty Brazilian model.

There were many reasons why this movie was terrible—hideous dialogue, shockingly predictable plot, relentless musical montages, and three Ashlee Simpson songs which the audience had to agonizingly endure for their entirety. The filmmakers attempt to fill time by putting these identical-sounding songs to flashbacks of Brier and Luke’s courtship, his rise to fame, and the inevitable breaking point when he realizes he’s been a jerk. I won’t tell you how it ends, but I urge you not to watch the movie to find out, because it is in no way surprising.

The closing credits have short “plot wrap-up” scenes, but honestly, I just couldn’t stay to watch. By that point I had really had enough.