A slob comedy that even Rob Schneider would consider beneath his talents, "Kickin' It Old Skool" features Jamie Kennedy as a break dancing Rip Van Winkle. After a head-cracking aerial move at a grade-school dance contest puts him in a 20-year coma, he reawakens to a changed world. "I missed everything," he moans.
" 'Gremlins II,' 'Ghostbusters II.' " What's more, his schoolboy crush (Maria Menounos) is engaged to a nasty TV executive (Michael Rosenbaum, who plays Lex Luthor in TV's "Smallville") and his parents are near-bankruptcy. The quickest route to solving his romantic and financial problems, naturally, is to reunite his break-dancing team and win the $100,000 top prize in a talent contest sponsored by Rosenbaum's channel.
Though the film does have some genuine fondness for that gentler time, most of its energy is spend mining a shallow vein of '80s nostalgia. If you find artefacts such as David Hasselhoff, "Star Search," dancers doing "The Robot" and Smurf toys laughable all on their own, the film may hold some amusement for you. Kennedy is a negligible performer, a hopeless dancer, and his romantic connection to the lovely Menounos is preposterous even by the movie's absurd standards.
Rosenbaum, however, makes his character a wickedly entertaining scoundrel, the sort of snarky, conniving heel you're glad to spend time with while the hero is off camera. The only explanation I can offer for this film being shown in theaters is that "Spider-Man 3" hits the screens next Friday. Multiplex owners know there will be no pressure to hold over this movie for an extended run.
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