Video Remainder Project 1: Taking 5, or "When Inessential Music and Inessential Movies collide"

Taking 5

Synopsis: Two geeky teens kidnap the world's most famous boy-band in an attempt to make them play at their high school and thus boost the girls' popularity.

RT ranking: 75% fresh

In life, one of the most important things is cheese. Whether it's cheesy movies, cheesy music, or cheesy TV, the one thing everyone knows about pop culture is that it's the really bad stuff that's just the most fun to watch. When they said television was a vast wasteland, they forgot that this is exactly the way that people want it.

This brings to mind the first movie to get added to the Remainder Project, Taking 5. Nowhere short of Wisconsin are you going to find this much cheese in one place. A cheesy kids' movie, built around the band The Click Five and their one-hit wonder music, and all in a package that seems like it was tailor made to be a cheesy made-for-cable movie. Put all of these things together, and you get a movie that is perfect to work in this project- a movie with all the style of High School Musical and its ilk with none of the essential nature that comes from being a countrywide phenomenon.

When I ended up picking this film up, it was the classic liquidation purchase, the all important "I could use something to kill some time, I didn't hate the Click Five's one hit...fuck it" move. Because of this, I ended up giving this film a chance, which soon became the first attempt at a generic choice.

End result:

At the very least, I learned the answer: Any time you have a generic tween movie built around a one-hit wonder, you have to take it. Likewise, anytime you have a generic tween movie built around a one-hit wonder and you are not a tween, you will probably try to gnaw your own foot off to escape the bear trap.

The best thing I could give it is that it took a little longer than I would have expected in theory for me to want to tap out to this movie. This says the film isn't as bad as it could have been. As Abraham Lincoln said, "This is the type of thing you'd like if you like this type of thing."

That's all well and good, but this isn't the type of thing I like.

Success/Failure: Minor Fail