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Wednesday, August 05, 2015

The Sister's Choice for Bad Movie Month takes us to back to school hell with College

As part of our Bad Movie Month party, an extra awful slice of cinematic cake is added on as a birthday salute to my sister Stephanie,who actually selected a flick that falls within this year's Sad Singers On Screen theme. One of the stars of College is American Idol contender Kevin "Chicken Little" Covais

I am not to blame for her seeing College back in the summer of 2008, having chosen to watch another movie(which I don't rightly recall) during that fateful trip to the multiplex. However, due to a malfunctioning DVD, I was only able to watch a hour's worth of the ninety minutes of hell that is this vile excuse for a full length feature.


Nevertheless, I have seen more than enough to give a coherent review of this mess. Covais is not the lead, that pathetic honor belongs to Drake Bell( teen star of Nickelodeon's Drake and Josh) who plays Kevin, a nose to the grindstone type of high school senior whose only interest in visiting a local college is academic.

Due to his girlfriend Gina breaking up with him(because he's "boring") and the urgings of his other buddy Carter(Andrew Caldwell), Kevin decides to embrace the bawdy party scene that has been promised to him by a fellow classmate. Mind you, this random pal's recommendation for the "best weekend "of their lives includes smoking a tampon and yet still getting high. Sorry to gross anyone out already but that is part of the actual dialogue, which is featured in the film's official trailer:


 Joined by nerdy Morris(Covais), this inept trio arrives at the local college and winds up being taken in by a frat house that is so bad that they're not allowed to have any new pledges. Lucky for them that this band of bozos showed up when they did!

The kid I hate the most here is Carter, who resembles an older version of Chunk from The Goonies, only with less intelligence, charm and wit. He is such an ignorant lout, I have trouble believing that he's able to attend high school , let alone considering college. For example, he thinks Of Mice and Men sounds "gay" and one of his pick up lines to a girl involves preserving her flatulence in a can(I am so not making that last one up). I suppose he's meant to be comedy relief but the only relief that Carter provides is when he's not in a scene:





 Most of the movie is taken up by the nasty frat house guys who devise all sorts of torment for the boys(who they know are high school kids,btw). Turns out one of the frat guys,Teague, has it in for Kevin, as they're both interested in the same girl on campus.

One of the big sequences has the guys being forced to do body shots off of a particularly repulsive frat member named Bearcat(in a very not safe for work scene, you have been warned), who is my second most hated character in this film.

 Other awful pranks include duct taping a naked Kevin to a statue overnight, tricking the boys into attending a  party being held by an all-male gay fraternity(lots of gay panic humor here and I use the term humor loosely) and stealing all of their money and credit cards to pay for a lavish party.

For some reason, a couple of Penthouse Pets and Verne Troyer are on the guest list but fortunately for me, the DVD conked out before I could see if there was any point to that at all. Look, I am no stranger to the raunchy comedy genre,especially in a college setting. However, this film makes the likes of National Lampoon's Animal House look as sedate as Masterpiece Theater, not to mention Revenge of the Nerds sound like Shakespeare.

From the writing to the acting and beyond, College is stupid,stupid,stupid and a real punishment on the senses to endure. I truly feel bad that my sister made the unfortunate decision to see this movie monstrosity when it was first released but, hey, we all make cinematic mistakes there:



Speaking of mistakes, I have no idea what possessed Kevin Covais to be part of this movie. Perhaps he and Drake Bell thought this would be a good change-up from their nice guy personae. Well, this certainly was a learning experience in what not to do when picking movie roles. Too bad neither one of them took that real world lesson to heart.

While Drake Bell still has a movie career of sorts(mostly direct to DVD) and a musical one as well, Kevin Covais' last big onscreen part was in Transformers: Age of Extinction that even Wikipedia lists as "Minor Role".

Oh, well, he'll always have American Idol to look back on fondly. Tune in next time on Bad Movie Month for more AI awfulness with From Justin to Kelly and join me in wishing my sister a very happy birthday! At least this year, she has much better entertainment lined up than this movie or even listening to Covais sing the phone book:


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