Class Act Reviews

As the Fat Boys demonstrated in DISORDERLIES, the social stridency of rap music does not mix well with crude, antediluvian slapstick. And now Kid 'N' Play, the popular rap duo that scored high-energy hilarity in HOUSE PARTY, offer further proof with the intensely juvenile CLASS ACT. CLASS ACT regurgitates the old mistaken identity comic formula that reaches back to A Comedy of Errors and The Prince and the Pauper, only updating it to a South Central Los Angeles high school, where, due to a contrived switching of student records, two newcomers to the high school, Duncan Pinderhughes (Christopher "Kid" Reid) and Blade (Christopher "Play" Martin), are mistaken for one another. Duncan and Blade are complete opposites--Duncan a shy, straight-A student and Blade a street tough on parole. When Duncan and Blade manage to meet two attractive female classmates, Damita and Ellen (Alysia Rogers and Karyn Parsons), they reluctantly agree to continue with the charade in order to continue seeing the girls. After a series of confused complications, Duncan and Blade are chased by the local drug gang into a cut-rate wax museum that features the likenesses of Jerry Lewis, Christopher Lloyd, Larry Fine and other notables. There they vanquish the bad guys and confess their real identities to the girls, who, being true-blue types, stick with the guys anyway. As a coda, Duncan and Blade appear on a local TV quiz show, where they get the right answers and win honor and fame for their high school. At this rate, can a remake of THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES with Kriss Kross be far behind? Despite an up-to-date hipness and a sexually aware subtext in which girlfriends readily dispense condoms to their rarin' to go boyfriends, CLASS ACT, with its low voltage slapstick and cartoonish characterizations, feels decidedly secondhand, nothing more than a retread of such 60s drive-in teen flicks as SKI PARTY, MUSCLE BEACH PARTY and IT'S A BIKINI WORLD, with Tommy Kirk and Dwayne Hickman transformed into Kid 'N' Play. Randall Miller directs the film with a sledgehammer intensity that pounds John Semper and Cynthia Freidlob's screenplay into dust. Like William Asher's beach films of the 60s, the graceless crudity of the direction overwhelms the shallowness of the screenplay, allowing only the most obtuse viewer not to understand what is happening in the film at any given point. In a 60s world of drive-in movies and triple bills, this style permitted the viewer to relax his gaze upon the film for other pursuits, from getting a hot dog to concentrating on the companion seated next to him in his car, and still come back to the film at any point and know immediately what was going on. But CLASS ACT, showcased on its own in a 90s multiplex, only serves to expose its blandness and its thin and belabored comedy. The film is also confused in its political priorities. CLASS ACT seems to want to be a role model film for inner-city teens, teaching the importance of responsibility and education. But the film holds Duncan's world up to ridicule, from his shallow parents to ineffectual school administrators and ignorant high school teachers. At the same time, Blade's street world is depicted as more honest than Duncan's world of phonies, from Blade's ability to wing a biology lecture, to his cool clothes and shiny red car. All of this renders the sudden, head-banging inclusion of an anti-drug rap song performed by Kid 'N' Play halfway through the film not only jarring and unconvincing, but hard-headed, insincere and cynical. CLASS ACT is so misguided that even the filmmakers themselves have thrown in the towel. As a coda to the film, Kid 'N' Play appear as themselves to wrap up stray plotlines. When Play threatens to retell the story from Blade's point of view, in a rap HE SAID, SHE SAID mode, Kid grabs him and physically drags him off camera, exhorting him by saying, "They're not going to sit through this again!" No truer words have ever been spoken. (Adult situations.)