Blue-collar kid goes to Navy school – haven’t we seen this show before, you candy- striping little plebe?
Sir, yes, sir! We’ve seen it before, sir!
White recruit goes mano-a- mano with hard-nosed black drill instructor – sound familiar, you miserable plebe?
Sir, yes, sir! Very familiar, sir!
Good white youth helps United Nations of roommates through muddy obstacle course, soft roomie can’t handle bad officer and tries to kill himself, antagonists settle differences in boxing ring – isn’t this all tiresome, recycled Navy hash?
Sir, yes, sir! I believe it was “An Officer and a Gentleman,” sir!
I didn’t ask you for the title, you puling mama’s boy! I just want to know why Hollywood keeps rewriting the same feel-good story about military recruits! What’s next, “Coast Guard Cookoff”?
Sir, is that a rhetorical question, sir?
Don’t talk back to me, you chum-scrubbing crustacean! Drop and give me 20!
Forgive all the shouting, but even a mediocre movie like “Annapolis” gets you strutting around like a drill sergeant on steroids. Yes, this tepid James Franco vehicle feels a lot like a new-Navy update on the old Navy circa Richard Gere.
It’s not that the movie is awful – preview audiences seem to enjoy the melodrama, and Franco’s brooding presence (“Spider-Man” and the current “Tristan & Isolde”) can carry the screen. It’s just that it all looks terribly familiar, not only from “Officer and a Gentleman” but every other movie that features impressionable warriors in their tailored whites.
Even the girlfriend, Jordana Brewster, wears her hat and her smirk too much like Demi Moore in “A Few Good Men.” You can guess every scene a half-hour ahead of time, down to the bar fights with townies and the push-ups in the pouring rain.
Franco plays J.D. Huard, a shipbuilder in the (nonexistent) naval shipyards of Annapolis. He’s building a destroyer just across the bay from the U.S. Naval Academy, and you can’t argue with the setting. One tour of the storied, leaf-strewn campus makes everyone want to film a movie there.
Huard promised his mom he would go to the academy someday, and he finally makes the wait list after first showing off his skills in a chumps-level boxing league. Do you think there might be another boxing match before the end of the movie? Is a battleship gray?
Franco meets the usual Pier One Imports selection of roommates: the brainy, intense Asian; the overweight, cuddly black comic relief; and the Hispanic ladies’ man.
He also meets, to his four-year regret, senior Cole (Tyrese Gibson), who will train the incoming class and of course personally torture Franco for having the audacity to show up in his movie.
Sparks fly. Pencils get sharpened. Beds get remade to exacting Navy standards.
Absent a war outside a Middle Eastern desert that might feature a nice naval battle, the tension for “Annapolis” is supplied by the annual all-academy boxing match. Sir, we’re getting a message by semaphore: “Huard … is … tough … but … undisciplined.”
“Annapolis” leaves you vaguely seasick from unearned adrenaline. The editing works to make the climaxes sharp, but in the end your stomach is too empty to keep it all down.
I suggest waiting for the DVD. You do have a Netflix queue, don’t you, plebe?
Sir, yes, sir!
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
** | “Annapolis”
PG-13 for language and violence|1 hour, 35 minutes|MILITARY DRAMA|Directed by Justin Lin, written by David Collard; starring James Franco, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Vicellous Reon Shannon and Donnie Wahlberg|Opens today at area theaters.
