Annapolis is a Touchstone Pictures release.
Wide theatrical release: January 27.
Directed by Justin Lin.
Screenplay by David Collard.
Starring: James Franco, Tyrese Gibson, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Jordana Brewster, Donny Wahlberg, Roger Fan
Rated PG-13 for some violence, sexual content and language.
Running time: 108 minutes
Alex’s Rating: 3 out of 10.
Annapolis, Disney’s new movie about a plebe’s first year at the United States Naval Academy, it pretty much a bust from beginning to end. Hardly a cliche is left untouched, but here’s a summary anyway.
Jake Huard (James Franco) is an underachieving kid with a dream of attending the United States Naval Academy, but his friends and family wonder why he isn’t happy just working as a welder in the shipyards of Annapolis, within sight of the very place he is determined to find himself. Despite poor academic performance (because, you know, a dream isn’t really worth studying for), perseverence finally gets him a congressional recommendation and by some longshot he is informed the day before classes start that a spot has opened up and he will be attending after all. That night, he parties with his buddies and they trick him into thinking a woman at the bar (Jordana Brewster) is a hooker they bought for him. Of course, it turns out this “hooker” will be his superior at the Academy.
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At this point we’re barely beyond the opening credits. How many tired college and military movie cliches have already been presented? Did you notice the homage to Top Gun there at the end? Don’t bother counting yet, they’re still coming.
Huard is assigned a room with three classmates: the oversexualized wisecracker Estrada (Wilmer Calderon), the by-the-book overachiever Loo (Roger Fan), and the overweight heart-of-gold known as Twins (Vicellous Reon Shannon). Their company commander, Cole (Tyrese Gibson), is a former enlisted marine now in his senior year at the Academy, who immediately sees in Huard someone not good enough for the uniform and acts accordingly. Life is tough for Huard, and he almost doesn’t come back from Christmas break before deciding that he’s not going to be pushed into breaking a promise made to his dead mother.
When the movie finally breaks with college/military movie cliche, it is only to slip seemlessly into sports movie cliche. The message the Academy tries to pound into Huard is that he can’t go it alone, that the Navy is a team sport. Apparently he learns this lesson by deciding he is going to win the school boxing tournament, which will require going through Cole. Oh, and along the way he is going to earn the respect of his peers and hopefully end up with the girl.
Don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled the whole movie for you. There are plenty of depressingly tired details not shared here.
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Cliche, however, is not the only fundamental flaw in Annapolis though. If that were the only problem, it might be overcome. There is the problem of age; in a story detailing a year in the life of 18- to 20-year-olds, not one member of the principal cast is younger than 25 and worse, not one looks younger than 25. It’s a bit like the final seasons of M*A*S*H when the Korean War was apparently staffed by 40-year-old draftees.
Then there’s the fact that somehow Annapolis is a movie about the training of America’s military officers, produced during a time of war, that gives almost no attention to exactly what it is these people are training for. A couple times throughout the movie, Huard half-heartedly says he is there to serve his country but the real reason seems to be that his mom brought him to the campus as a child for picnics, and he made a deathbed promise to her that he’d attend. One is only left to wonder, considering his half-hearted approach through much of the movie, what will happen when he graduates into a naval officer, his promise no longer a driving force, and lives depending on his decisions. Twins is the only other character with examined motivations and they also don’t reveal even a hint of patriotic idealism. No other character is given even a slight window into expression of why they chose the Naval Academy.
It is hard to imagine much purpose in a movie about soldiers in which themes of war, ambition, and service aren’t even touched upon. At this point it isn’t even worth mentioning that according to this movie all that happens at the U.S. Naval Academy is a bunch of P.E. classes and naval trivia questions barked from upperclassmen. Not a single instructor (other than P.E.) is seen and the only mention of classwork is brief mention of a calculus test. Of course, you don’t really want to watch anybody take that calculus test, but the story never seems to touch on what going to a military college is actually like.
So far in his career, James Franco hasn’t given much reason to expect great acting performances, and he does nothing in Annapolis to give much hope for one in the future. Initially there is some promise in his brooding and squinting, but it quickly grows tiring and by Christmas break in the movie, you’ll find yourself hoping he does quit so that the movie can end early.
Tyrese Gibson and Jordana Brewster are not on screen so much as people but as types and they glide through their scenes as quickly as possible, likely relieved that they don’t have the weight of the movie riding on their shoulders. One decent performance, as well as some good lines in an otherwise anemic script, is from Vicellous Reon Shannon as Twins. His character is no less a stock character than anybody else, but he manages to create a thin crust of humanity around it.
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The biggest disappointment in all of this is director Justin Lin. Lin got his career break in 2002 when his credit card-financed film, Better Luck Tomorrow, made a big splash at the Sundance Film Festival. Unfortunately that film has more creativity and drive in any five minutes than the entirety of Annapolis. That his next movie is going to be a third movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise speaks poorly for surviving the major studios with any artistic credibility left.
But rest assured, I will end this review with the one positive to be found in the entire movie. As stupid as the boxing plot is, the actual bouts are full of energy and style that hint at potential never realized. So, in such a horrid movie it is only fair to give a shout out to cinematographer Phil Abraham and editor Fred Raskin who, along with Lin are most responsible for the only highlights worth mentioning.
The movie is rated PG-13 for “some violence, sexual content and language.” Frankly, I have no idea what violence and sexual content the MPAA could be talking about. Yes, there’s plenty of boxing and it is somewhat brutal (mostly because, for artistic reasons the participants in the Bridages Boxing Championship are shown fighting without headgear; the actual tournament uses amateur rules and headgear is worn) but otherwise there are only two non-boxing punches thrown. Other than a couple kisses, the movie is almost completely without sexual content. Language will be a concern for many parents though nobody ever really “curses like a sailor.”
All this is moot of course, since while the movie may not have the sex, violence, or language to bar most family members, it also lacks any compelling reason to see it in the first place.
