Full of It is a new high-school comedy--and I use that term loosely--by director Christian Charles (Comedian). Complete with a cast of relative unnotables, it stars Ryan Pinkston (Punk'd, Spy-Kids 3-D: Game Over) as Sam Leonard, a haplessly naive, underdeveloped, and dorky high school senior who begins telling lies to fit in and then is shocked to discover all his lies are coming true.

The cast is rounded out with character actor John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac, The Good Girl) and perpetually grating Cynthia Stevenson (Agent Cody Banks, Happiness) as his guileless parents; Kate Mara (We Are Marshall, Brokeback Mountain) as his friend Annie; Joshua Close (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, K-19: The Widowmaker) as stereotypical handsome jock Kyle Plunkett; and not especially pretty Amanda Walsh (Sons and Daughters) perplexingly cast as prettiest girl in school Vicki Sanders. Oh, and Teri Polo (Meet the Parents, The West Wing) and Craig Kilborn (Old School, Sports Center) go slumming as high school faculty members. Martha Focker, I thought you were better than that.

Full of It starts off with Sam being dropped off for his first day at his new school. A family sing-along to the squeakiest of Beach Boys songs in the car and a big group hug in front of all his classmates lets us know that Sam isn't going to fit in at all. And that, my friends, is the last establishing anything you'll get.

Want to know why his family moved and he is starting a new school his senior year? Why Craig Kilborn is such a haggard wasteoid of a guidance teacher? Not gonna find out. Think there should be a reason that Sam is soooo much smaller and younger-looking than his high school counterparts? Tough noogies. Wonder why, most of all, he is totally clueless as to how to act in your normal American high school - unclued in on all the tenets of social behavior any normal human would get by first grade? Yeah, me too. But they're not going to tell you in Full of It.

Sadly, exposition isn't the only thing this movie is light on. I think I may have laughed once (oh, that silly homework-eating dog, how it slays me). There was a moment when I hoped it might actually be a send-up of the Can't Buy Me Loves, She's All Thats, Never Been Kisseds, Mean Girls, Heathers, Freaky Fridays, and every John Hughes movie ever made of the world. But no, writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (Rebound) just made a horrible hack-job of recycling others' better ideas.

I do think it is possible that Full of It might find an audience of middle school-aged kids. I could see them possibly enjoying the broad "humor" and identifying with the high-school setting and issues. And since the movie is shot--oh so misleadingly--like an indie, maybe the look of it will whet their appetites for counterculture filmmaking as they get older. That would be a redeeming quality. But that's just a possibility.

Mostly though, if you're past puberty, I would advise that you do yourself a favor and leave all the mean jocks, locker adornments, and unwanted virginity in the past where it belongs.

ReelzChannel Rating: 

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