The New Guy

Teen movies have really hit the skids. Aiming at the lowest common denominator depends on where you start and how deep you dig. The new guy walks around with underpants on his head, when he's not being tied to a chair with joke breasts strapped to his chest.

American high schools are all about cool. The girls could graduate in cosmetic application without opening a book and the guys have never recovered from Grease. Dizzy Gillespie Harrison (D J Qualls) hasn't a hope in hell. His dad (Lyle Lovett) lives in a trailer home. He's skinny as a rake and fronts a too-pathetic-to-be-punk band. Something happened to his penis in a very public place and he has to take pills to mend it.

He hates high school so much, he tries to get expelled. One of his wheezes is to film the headmaster on the lav. Laugh? You'll die. Eventually, he succeeds and moves to another school down the road, after spending time in jail, where a crazed black dude (Eddie Griffin) gives him tips on how to be scary and dangerous. He makes use of what he has learnt and reinvents himself. Within a week of arriving at the new academy of learning, he has whapped the hunky gang leader and stolen his girl (Eliza Dushku). The ultimate absurdity is when he dresses up as Mel Gibson in Braveheart and leads the home team to do battle with his previous school on the football field.

Qualls has been typecast as a drippy nerd in terrible films, such as Road Trip. He's still a drippy nerd, but is given the chance to be Dustin Hoffman here, except this isn't The Graduate. It's worse than Not Another Teen Movie.