THE NEW GUY -----------
Dizzy Gillespie Harrison (D.J. Qualls, "Road Trip") is the biggest loser at Rocky Creek High. He's been tied up in a dress with fake rubber breasts and left in the school corridors and suffered the permanent rearrangement of his male member at the hands of an eighty year old librarian in front of a howling crowd. But Dizzy has a plan. He'll get himself expelled from school and transferred so that he can have a fresh start as "The New Guy."
Why Ed Decter, cowriter of the hugely popular "There's Something About Mary," chose to make his directorial debut with TV scribe David Kendall's ("Growing Pains") first produced screenplay is only slightly less of a mystery than why this project was ever greenlit. This sad mishmash of gross out jokes, slapstick, movie parodies and teenage movie cliches plays like a series of unrelated scenes that were thrown into a blender with a broken puree button.
Dizzy's even lower on the food chain that his bandmate buddies, grossly overweight Black kid Kirk (Jerod Mixon, "Me, Myself & Irene"), quiet Asian nerd Glen (Parry Shen, "Better Luck Tomorrow") and perfectly normal Nora (Zooey Deschanel, Quall's "Big Trouble" costar). His efforts to get expelled end up with guidance counselor Kiki (Ileana Douglas in a pathetic parody of her art school teacher in "Ghost World") smothering him with kindness and mood altering drugs. Finally, when he doesn't intend it, an inane act lands him in jail. Cellmate Luther (Eddie Griffin, "John Q") teaches Diz how to be cool through intimidation. He's then inexplicably delivered to East Highland High in Hannibal Lecter shackles by jailors who seem to be in on the joke.
Gil attracts a cheerleading girlfriend (Eliza Dushku, "Bring It On") by beating up her jock boyfriend and being kind to outcasts. She pleads for his help in drumming up some school spirit. Soon their last place football team is #1 and everyone loves everybody else until a bully from Gil's past shows up to burst his bubble.
The talented D.J. Qualls is not only likeable, but makes a convincing switch from hopeless pipsqueak to cool hipster. Every other aspect of this film fails him, however, from the embarrassingly bad performance of Lyle Lovett as his dad to the non sequitur editing style. Dushku's bland line readings and bikini montage elevate her billing over the more interesting Deschanel, but Zooey's kept down by this awful script anyway. Cameos by Henry Rollins, Gene Simmons, Tommy Lee and David Hasselhoff are head scratchers (although maybe they formed a perverse band with Lovett and the instrument props while waiting to shoot). The film features parodies of "Risky Business," "Patton" and "Braveheart," with only the latter released during this film's target audience's lifetime. But then again, "The New Guy's" makers seem to find mechanical bull riding and midgets let loose in barrels fresh fodder for comedy.
D
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