The Mod Squad
Thriller 1999 |
 Even from a marketing standpoint, making a 1999 studio action film out of the old
TV show The Mod Squad is as deranged an idea as Hollywood's had in a while, or at
least since McHale's Navy. Simply put: Nobody who fondly remembers the show goes to
Claire Danes movies. (An introductory title even defines "mod" for the large
chunk preteens that don't know, shouldn't know, and shouldn't care what the word means.)
What's
next, a remake of Longstreet starring Freddie Prinze Jr.? The Mod Squad,
which is altogether worse than you'd expect, is criminally stupid, sloppy, and dull, never
even coming close to the consciousness-abusing efficiency of normal high-concept studio
hogwash. Let's be clear: The Mod Squad doesn't suck because it is empty, crude,
pandering formulaic trash, it sucks because it fails to be even that. Saying it's shot and
produced like one of those quickly made, absurdly brainless '70s TV shows isn't saying
much (Aaron Spelling himself is a producer). Crummy as those shows were, they had coherent
scripts. This movie feels like it was scripted on index cards somebody kept dropping.
So, Claire Danes is the ex-junkie-prostitute,
Julie; Giovanni Ribisi is the former punk, Pete; and Omar Epps is the supercool Linc. All
three were saved from prison by Greer (Dennis Farina), who turns them into undercover
cops. This much you can surmise from the poster, but the movie doesn't tell you much more.
The trio is initially put on the case of some vague "black book" prostitution
ring being run out of a nightclub. But soon each of them is embroiled in seemingly
different situations that are all somehow tied together and involve drugs; corrupt cops;
Michael Lerner as some kind of eccentric, obese crime lord; and Julie's old boyfriend
Billy (Josh Brolin), who is a double-dealing scumbag. From one scene to the next, you have
no idea where the characters are, what they're waiting for, who they're following, or what
precisely you're going to throw at the screen if you sit through one more musical
interlude.
Director Scott Silver and his co-writers
Stephen T. Kay, and Kate Lanier obviously made this baby up as they went along, and
sitting through it is something like following a blind mule through the desert. No one is
allowed to act, of course, so the three stars attempt to get by on poses. Danes is
considerably less interesting now that she's finished puberty, Epps makes Clarence
Williams III look like Sidney Poitier, and Ribisi seems to be carrying over his retarded
routine from The Other Sister. But it wouldn't have mattered if they were the
Barrymores — the movie is wrapped like a strait-jacket around them. The original show
wasn't all that hot anyway, but what it's germinated now, more than 30 years later, is
torture.
--Michael Atkinson
Rated R for language,
violence, and some sexuality.
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