Detention (2012)

First off, let me say this: not liking this movie does not mean that "I don't get it." The only thing worse than the "that's your opinion" argument is the old tried and true "you just didn't get it" BS. Good things have bad qualities, bad things have good qualities; you can be receptive to those, but it doesn't change what something truly is.

This movie plays like one big music video aimed at teenagers, and I really think the teenage demo will like it. It doesn't take an attention span or brain power to endure Detention, and on top of that it's slick and flashy as hell. Some people will truly love it.

It took us about 10 minutes of enduring the movie's constant barrage of clever references and winks to say "alright, you're really clever, and you know you are, and now you know that we know, so please stop using every single scene to remind us of that, over and over again."

We get it already.

We just don't want to.

Dane Cook is never the solution. Never.

Detention starts out as a self-aware satire, turns into a Slasher flick, then becomes a teen comedy, then it becomes a drama before turning into a time-travel movie. Then it becomes a sequel to Freaky Friday, and eventually rolls back to being a Horror movie, all the while being the bastard child of a bunch of other movies and genres. It's like the annoying embodiment of Juno got gang-banged by Scott Pilgrim, Donnie Darko, Dane Cook, The Breakfast Club, Scream, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Freaky Friday, while Diablo Cody videotaped it all. Then, the tape goes in a blender, gets mixed up real good, poured back out, re-formed into usable film again, and is screened through an MTV filter. Actually, this movie is a lot like an MTV original movie, though it's not quite up to the quality of the Footloose remake.. or that shitty-looking Katy Perry travesty that's currently in Theaters.

Don't give me that look, Spencer Locke, you know I'm right.

Everything that happens in this movie is just too confused and senseless; like "Diablo Cody wrote this on meth" confused and senseless. There's not anything to concentrate on here, because the movie is basically one 90's reference after another, intermingled with overtly witty dialogue and tons of plot elements that make little sense, and I'm not even adding the time-traveling bear and body switching absurdity into that equation. It's a garish mess.

Detention starts off fun and interesting, but the novelty wears off really, really quick. Let me put it like this: I imagine that Detention will be loved in Japan. Ever see some of the wacky, crazy, insane, zany, senseless shit that becomes crazy popular over there? This is just like that.

Poor Peeta.

It's like that scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray appears on the Japanese talk show, "Matthew's Best TV Hit", and the host is all dressed crazy and dancing around like he's all drunk on sake, and these computer generated hearts appear in mid-air and the host blows kisses at the camera... and all the while Bill Murray is sitting there like "what in the fuck is going on right now?"

It's like that.

The movie did have a few bright spots; it's a nice looking flick, the music is pretty rad, and it had a good cast. Josh Hutcherson was actually pretty solid in this, even without anything solid to work with. I also gotta hand it to the director; he made a pretty sharp looking movie on the cheap, which is no easy feat. That much I have to give him.

Enough with the dirty looks already... it sucked!

Detention is an annoying, pointless and confusing flick that lacks any semblance of focus whatsoever. Aside from it looking sharp and a few of the actors being decent in it, I can't see any way that we could look someone in the eye and say "yeah, you should totally see this one." We've been dying to see this movie since last year, and now that we have, it really makes us question our "this looks awesome!" barometer.

We get it, we just really don't like it.

Not even the hotness of Spencer Locke could salvage the experience of watching this movie for us. Good try though, Spencer. We appreciate the effort.