Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I think Topher Grace is an actor of enormous potential, and I hope he manages his career carefully. SPIDER-MAN 3 certainly exposed him to more audiences than anything else he’s ever done, and I hope he’s able to build on that in the right way. It certainly wasn’t his best work, but maybe it’ll get some good scripts sent his way.

In the meantime, this one was shot before SPIDER-MAN 3, and it’s just now getting ready to be released. Is it worth a look?

Hey Harry...

NUGGETBUSTER here... I seem to get screening tickets to a lot of the "slapstick sex/coming of age too late" comedy movies (saw 40 Year Old Virgin and Grandma's Boy as first test audiences), and last night was no different as I was part of the "very, very first" audience to see the new upcoming Topher Grace comedy "Kids in America". Thought you might like a word or two on it, seeing as it is Mr. Grace's first showing since Spidey 3.

Plot spoilers: The film follows the happenings of Matt Franklin (Grace), an MIT Graduate with a reputation for being incredibly smart and most likely to succeed out of his class. However, he completes MIT realizing that he hates engineering, and becomes frozen on the fast track to nowhere. He works in a local mall at Suncoast Pictures, and it is in this setting that the girl of his high school dreams, Tori (played by the beautiful Teresa Palmer) walks in and brings back all sorts of funny feelings in his pants. In order to impress her, Matt quickly ditches his Suncoast attire and pretends to be a high profile banker. It is in this pretend identity that Tori invites Matt to a big Labor Day party (which, strangely, is being thrown by his twin sister and her boyfriend. Strange, because Matt has no clue about where the party is, though I'm sure this will be ironed out). The movie then follows Matt and his friend Barry (played with intensity by Balls of Fury star Dan Fogler), who is a sleazy sort of luxury car salesman who just happened to be fired that very day. As you can probably guess, all sorts of drug related sheninagans occurs, resulting in Matt and barry stealing a luxury car, Barry ending up snorting a whole lot of cocaine, and then later finding himself in the middle of some sort of creepy dominatrix style three way). Matt continues his banker facade until he finally bags Tori, then admits the truth to which she is hurt and leaves him. The story ends with Matt pulling some sort of crazy party stunt called "Riding the Ball" (think giant metal hamster ball down a large hill), which somehow wins
Tori back.

Alright, there is the set-up for you. Now, let me rip this piece of crap movie to shreds. It was such a cheap ass combination of EVERY single OTHER freaking sex comedy I've ever seen. It's seriously like someone went to the cutting room floor of Grandma's Boy (which I found to be less than stellar in the first place, though redeemed a little bit by Joel Moore), Harold and Kumar, and little bits of Eurotrip mixed with a chaser of 40 Year Old Virgin (minus the charm and the wit). Now, granted this was a very early test print, I really found this movie just tried to hard to be funny, but all of the king's jewels were "me too" bits that you've either seen before, or were too juvenile and forced to be laughable. Top that with the fact that Topher Grace really dragged through the whole film as if this was just a quick paycheck (though he apparently wrote the premise of the story), and there was literally NO chemistry between him and Tori and you've got one hell of a dumb movie. ALSO, I had a really big issue with the fact that much of the movie revolves around Barry taking copious amounts of cocaine. This wasn't presented with any sort of emotional weight or consequence, but rather like they are trying to turn blow into the next comedic tool like marijuana has been in the past. With Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton ... I don't know. Cocaine just isn't funny. And when you try to marry a fat kid snorting coke with supposedly funny moments as stealing a luxury car and banging a sexy banker while her creepy German friend watches ... well, it just seemed a little too close to home for the hurting world of young Hollywood.

I think this film could be redeemed somewhat with some more
exploration of why Matt Franklin is such a deadbeat, and why the beautiful Tori is still cruising around for dude's at Labor Day parties. Comedic timing would be a big help too, as some of the jokes were just carried on for too long. But all said, I was sort of hoping this film would be a little more intelligent coming from Topher Grace, who for all intensive purposes is worthy of some real witty roles. But it was just a jumbled ball of "me too" that jumps onto the "coming of middle age" sex comedy films that seem to be making a lot of money lately. And why the hell is it called Kids in America? Wasn't that some sort of different sex comedy starring Nicole Richie a few years ago? Baffled, to be sure. But oh well ... with a 2008 release date, this one still has a while to work out the kinks. I hope it does so.

If you use any of this, I'm NuggetBuster. Love the site, thanks for feeding my geek.