Bad Atti-Toon

By RICHARD CORLISS

Hollywood just can't be trusted. A few weeks ago, we were positive that the Sandra Bullock comedy Forces of Nature would stand for years as the nadir of filmmaking. People would come out of some piece of tripe, shrug and say, "It wasn't as bad as Forces of Nature." Well, we were wrong; the bar just got lowered. The Mod Squad, based on the TV series that ran from 1968 to 1973, is a disaster you don't have to wait for to happen. It could be the capper segment in a Fox prime-time special on the World's Most Inept Movies. The cinematography is so gross and grainy that the film looks like its own illegal dupe. The stars seem to be acting under protest. The picture has the jagged anti-rhythm of some cheap hipster fiasco from the '60s. It's bad.

The idea was to spice the old format with smart comers--Claire Danes (Romeo + Juliet), Omar Epps (Higher Learning) and Giovanni Ribisi (the medic in Saving Private Ryan)--and a screw-you modernity. Instead, director and co-writer Scott Silver (Johns) gives us a surly anti-toon; it's the Three Sociopathic Stooges with lots of Method mewling. By the time Ribisi has his big shouting scene with Epps ("Dude, your cover's been blown. Your cover's been blown. You cover has been blown!"), you realize these kids just aren't having any fun playing cops. But hang around to see fat bad guy Michael Lerner waltzing with Epps to My Favorite Things. That's when it becomes clear that Silver thinks he's gone beyond lousy entertainment into David Lynch-style Art Deco-dence.

For a directorial career, maybe this is a quirky suicide note. For the actors, it's no big whoop. Young stars need to be in at least one dumb ugly movie like this one. Next year it'll make a cute-embarrassing story to tell Jay Leno.

--By Richard Corliss