The Mod Squad (1999)

"The Mod Squad" is a motion picture update of the original TV series which originally aired in the late 60s/early 70s.The original "Mod Squad" featured a trio of college aged friends circa 1970 who had unofficial detective status with the local Los Angeles police force and worked to solve crimes that were taking place among people their age. The story lines frequently dealt with then-timely topics of the counter culture, feminism, civil rights, racism, the war in Vietnam, the (Baby Boomer era) generation gap, and more. Without actually being cops, this was a precursor of sorts to the 1980s-era 21 Jump Street.This film takes the basic, general concept of the Mod Squad, but doesn't execute the story very well. The lead characters (played by Omar Epps, Giovanni Ribisi, Claire Daines) all come across as sullen twits who have had previous scrapes with the law as teens, but somehow have come under the mentorship of a police Captain (played by a wasted Dennis Farina.) **Major Spoilers** the death of the Captain early on in the story prompts a revenge investigation by the Squad, but his death puts a cap on finding out just why this guy was so committed to mentoring these delinquents instead of just allowing the book to be thrown at them, years ago.The main plot has the team investigating a drug ring that heavily uses young adults as mules/dealers. Of course, the main boss is anything but someone their age, hence the "don't trust anyone over 25" attitude among the trio.Julie (Danes) has a cheating boyfriend, and in one sequence she sets his car and clothes on fire in revenge. This comes only a few years removed from a similar tactic seen in "Waiting to Exhale", so there's a bit of anticlimactic context to it.The villain is a generic mobster, and a sequence where he wants to dance with one of the male Squad guys is played straight, but comes across as an awkward gay-panic joke.The theater audience I saw this with got more of a hoot out of Eddie Griffin's cameo than they did out of Omar Epps' entire performance.About the only role I envied in this film was Claire Danes' pants.

The Mod SquadThe worst part about employing young undercover cops is they binge drink at house parties and break cover.Thankfully, the covert trio in this action movie are too busy tracking a killer to attend ragers.Opting to work for the police in a new department instead of serving time, Julie (Claire Danes), Pete (Giovanni Ribisi) and Linc (Omar Epps) are trained in the art of infiltration by their mentor Capt. Greer (Dennis Farina).But when Greer ends up on the wrong side of a drug lord's gun, the motley crew must bring his killer to justice.A slapdash adaptation of the groundbreaking counterculture cop drama from the '60s, this 1999 version lacks the social and political undercurrent of its source material. Instead, it's a lifeless and shoddily acted knock-off - similar to the original in name only.Besides, immature undercover officers today can't stop posting on Twitter about being undercover. Red Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

I'm not sure why this has the reputation it does, beyond the fact that it's one more needless remake, and this one wound up starring several people who never graduated to full-on movie stardom. Otherwise, it's no better or worse than most routine remakes of old movies or TV series in recent years. The relative cool (at the time) of the original TV series--which cast ostensible hippies as offenders-turned-undercover-cops--is hard to reproduce, as since then we've had "21 Jump Street" and so forth. Plus the line between "straight" and "alternative" culture is much less distinct than it was back then. But in any case, this movie hardly tries--it just uses the name as an excuse for a routine action movie about hot young ex-perp cops. Supposedly hot, at least. Danes seems like a junior legal secretary, Ribisi acts like a spaz, and Epps is OK but charisma-free. Actually they're all OK, under the circumstances, but none are particularly convincing--just good actors miscast as action heroes. Still, there's nothing particularly obnoxious about this misfire, the way there is about, say, your average Michael Bay joint. It's just mediocre. The packaging is perfectly competent if uninspired. The director's only prior feature was an excellent indie drama, "Johns," and it's really too bad that this flop mainstream crossover seems to have basically killed his career. (He did have a hand in the screenplays for later successes "8 Mile" and "The Fighter.") Actually the brief dramatic aspects here--Ribisi's disillusionment with his parents, Danes with her lying beau-- are decently handled. It's more the action/adventure/comedy angles that fail to levitate, though despite a few silly moments they're not particularly bad. (The funniest moment is a complete non sequitur when Ribisi shows up on the beach with take-out coffee and his recipients have no idea why he got it. Believe me, it's better in context.) Why do certain mainstream movies bomb and get labelled as serious duds, while others that are at least as bad (and/or as financially unsuccessful) get labelled as disasters? It's not always explicable. "The Mod Squad" isn't a particularly good movie. But it's not a particularly bad one, either. Actually it's kinda enjoyable, at least on the level of the routine TV action- series episodes it was inspired by (and which its musical score conspicuously imitates). It's just another so-so would-be franchise-launching film that got branded a dud cuz it landed like one. Maybe it would have been a better idea to parody the source the outdated material, as the big-screen "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky & Hutch" (or "21 Jump St.") did.

I must preface this comment with a sort of admission: I suppose I just have a soft spot for the original 60s-70s TV series. I think the filmmakers here blew it from the get-go as far as casting: in a supposed remake, audiences would look for reflections of the hip, athletic Linc (Clarence Williams III), or the cool, with-it Michael Cole, and so forth. Instead, we get Giovanni Ribisi as a poor-little-white rich boy who comes off as just pathetic, like he is in all his roles (in the office I used to work in, I amused myself once by creating a fake movie poster, casting various actors as members of the office staff; guess who I cast as the dorky son of the company President?). Danes does OK as the new Julie, but none of the characters have much to do, as the story just sort of sits there, mired in conventionality. So it's quite forgettable, besides. What was I talking about?