Review: The New Guy
Sony seems to be rocking the box office the last couple of months. With the awesome Panic Room in March and Spiderman last week, now we have The New Guy, a rather cliché, but enjoyable, teen movie about a geek who goes from getting beat up to helping those on the bottom of the tier.
The problem I have with movies like this is the way the stereotypical characters are portrayed. We have the cool guys on top, with their girlfriends who want nothing more than to have their clothes stripped off and their bodies examined by high school boys looking for nothing more than pie and Coke, or at least that is what I have been told. As you move down you get to the real people, aka normal kids who enjoy going to the mall, having real friends who don’t rely on the talking of others to improve their self-esteem to “I think I can” levels, and actually have something called personality.
The New Guy focuses on Dizzy Harrison (DJ Qualls) as he attempts to be expelled from his current school so he transfer to the school across the tracks and start a new life as a cool, reformed prison inmate. Aiding him in his quest is Eddie “Undercover Brother” Griffin who seems to be really struggling for something that could be called work in the unemployment office. Fortunately, for the audience, Griffin is hilarious in the parts he is in, as is the disturbing image of Horatio Sanz in fitness clothing.
No matter how hard Dizzy tries to be expelled the school’s nurse, who needs two more brain cells to make a pair, and some higher cut shirts, feels that he is just crying out for attention and convinces his dad, Lyle Lovett, that he needs to spend more time with his son.
As I stated before the main problem, and overall theme, is so cliché that you can guess every plot point as it happens, if you want to call them plot points. Dizzy gets expelled, goes to the new school, becomes cool, identifies with the geeks, uses status to help, gets found out, gets the girl, possibly gets some. Doesn’t that sound like your High School years?
Not to say The New Guy is all bad. It has a wealth of celebrity cameos that would make George Lucas piss himself. Tommy Lee (Method of Mayhem, Motley Crue) shows up at the ending party, with two women none-the-less. And the surprise appearance by David “Shut up KITT” Hasselhoff is just the icing on the “What the Hell” cake. Also appearing are Vanilla “Paycheck, Paycheck Baby” Ice and Tony Hawk who has some of the funnier moments in the movie.
If anything The New Guy is an enjoyable way to waste a couple of hours, or if you don’t want to see Spider-Man again (although I don’t think that is possible). See it if you have the time, but if you want to really laugh, rent Not Another Teen Movie, or answer your Spidey-sense and see the web-slinger again.
