Everyone please give a warm welcome to our new contributor, Mandy Albert!
Hello and welcome to a new ongoing series here at Alternate Ending: Raspberry Picking, where we re-evaluate the “winners” of the Golden Raspberry Awards! Are they really as bad as the contemporary critics made them out to be? Are some of them Good, Actually? We will answer these questions and more in our journey to the (alleged) bottom of the barrel with the (alleged) worst films of all time.
In developing this series, I wanted to embrace the site’s motto: “discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time.” My goal is to give a second chance to movies that are truly reviled. In other words, to qualify for the series, a film cannot have gone through a major critical reappraisal Heaven’s Gate or Mommie Dearest-style. It also cannot have found success on the midnight movie or B-movie circuits. The Room, Troll 2, and Manos: The Hands of Fate aren’t reviled; they’re beloved. It’s pointless to “re-evaluate” a movie that people already adore for how terrible it is. Since most of the past Razzie winners have been consigned to the dustbin of disgusted indifference, they seemed a perfect place to begin.
Each film will receive two scores out of five: a Quality of Movie score for artistry, and a Quality of Experience score for how much fun it is to watch regardless of artistry. The Room, for example, would receive ½ star for Quality of Movie and five stars for Quality of Experience; Shoah would receive the opposite score.
For our very first entry, we’re covering a film that underwhelmed everyone so much that it failed to even win any Razzie Awards despite seven nominations, but which the Razzie organizers considered so worthy that they invented a new award, the “Governor’s Award” for worst choreography, as an excuse to give it a Razzie anyway. Will it be the one to give us / all that we’ve been searching for? Almost certainly not, but we shall let it try anyway. That’s why we’re here.
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Sometimes, knowing the context in which a movie was made can enrich the experience of watching it. And yes, it’s fun to know the lurid things there are to know about From Justin to Kelly. For example, it’s a breathtakingly cynical exercise in corporate masturbation from Fox, owners of then-brand-spankin’-new TV karaoke contest and cash cow American Idol. Hoping to milk that cow until it screamed in pain, Idol creator Simon Fuller got a wonderful, awful idea. Why not create a series of tie-in movie musicals in which every season’s Idol champion and runner-up would be contractually obligated to star?
Not everyone thought this was a good idea. In fact, inaugural Idol champ Kelly Clarkson thought it was such a wretched idea that she begged in vain to be released from that part of her contract. Her pleas fell on deaf ears, and From Justin to Kelly – directed by Robert Iscove, written by Simon’s big brother Kim and starring Clarkson and Idol almost-was Justin Guarini as the central couple – sputtered into theaters like a big wet fart in June 2003. After it failed to make any money in its opening weekend, Fox literally broke a record rushing it to home video, and it has spent most of the rest of its existence quietly occupying bargain bins and “worst of the decade/century/all time” listicles.
An alarming amount of the choreography involves everyone groping themselves, possibly in imitation of the production meetings.
But does it deserve that level of scorn and ignominy? is the question we ponder today. And this is where knowing too much about a movie before you see it can get in your way a bit. Because when you look at that history, it sure sounds like From Justin to Kelly was destined to be a joyless, charmless, soulless piece of ill-conceived and barely functional product – the cinematic equivalent of the Juicero. And sure, large parts of it are exactly that. But if you can lower yourself enough to meet the movie where it lives, you may find that while nothing there is aesthetically pleasing or emotionally fulfilling, it’s a heck of a lot of fun, and not always at the movie’s expense.
THE BAD
Let’s go ahead and get the obvious out of the way: it’s real bad. A romance for the ages, or even for the 81 minutes one spends watching it, From Justin to Kelly is not.
The story, if one wishes to call it that, is that Kelly Taylor (Clarkson), a bartender in a painfully generic version of Texas, agrees to accompany her friends Kaya (Anika Noni Rose) and Alexa (Katherine Bailess) on their Spring Break trip to Miami or possibly Fort Lauderdale. (For clarity’s sake, I will use surnames when referring to actual human beings Clarkson and Guarini and first names when referring to their characters.) This requires a little arm-twisting, because Kelly, it is established, is Not Like Those Other Girls, but she wants to get away from her creepy suitor Luke (Christopher Ryan), so off to Miami or possibly Fort Lauderdale she goes.
Kelly, forgetting she’s not in Twilight, about to take a bite out of Justin
Once happily on the beach, Kelly makes an insta-connection with party promoter Justin Bell (Guarini), who is there with his friend and business partner Brandon (Greg Siff) to convince girls to cover their boobs in whipped cream. Kelly gives Justin her number, which he immediately loses; distraught, he goes to her friend Alexa for help. But Alexa, who is Definitely Like Those Other Girls, also has her sights set on Justin, and she gives him her own number, pretending that it’s Kelly’s, so that she can feign disinterest, wreck their relationship before it starts, and snag Justin’s sexy fro for herself.
Things start to go haywire for From Justin to Kelly from the first frame. Even the title, From Justin to Kelly, would seem to indicate that this is a tale of a romance built slowly and carefully through letter-writing, rather than a story of people so bad at communicating that one wonders if either of them would comprehend the concept of a “letter.” When Justin loses Kelly’s number, he has fallen out of a bathroom window (don’t ask); he does not think to walk around to the bathroom door to meet Kelly and ask her for it again. Neither of them ever consider that Kelly having Justin’s number might also be useful for their burgeoning flirtations. They discuss their continual lapses of communication with just about every other named character in the film except, until the last ten minutes, each other. Every romantic relationship has its hitches, especially in the early stages, but come on, you brought this on yourselves.
Most of the other characters fare no better. The script swings wildly back and forth on whether Alexa is a lonely misunderstood social butterfly or a conniving backstabbing bitchwhore, and thus none of her interactions with anyone make any sense. Bailess tries her not-very-good best with her impossible role, but the character was destined for failure. Brandon is a zero-dimensional obnoxious frat bro whose bizarre “romance” with the beach cop who keeps giving him citations is the most irritating of the film’s storylines. I think this subplot is supposed to show us his sweet side, but mostly it makes me hope he’ll get arrested for littering the beach with his party fliers.
As for our two leads, Clarkson’s loathing for this project is visible every time she is onscreen, both in the pained expressions on her face and the rigid, closed-off body language that makes her look like she’s understandably trying to disappear. She is done no favors by the drunks posing as a wardrobe department, who commit repeat acts of violence against her even before we get to the infamous skirt made of men’s ties.
What middle-aged British men think girls really letting loose looks like.
Guarini, meanwhile…oh dear. He seems like a nice enough fellow, but the man is a black hole of charisma. Every one of his lines sounds like he’s reading it off a sticky note taped to the umbrella pole, and his screen presence is so mechanical that he might as well be made of CGI. The composition of Clarkson and Guarini’s scenes together – scenes that are supposed to show the thrill of blossoming love – is so awkward and shoddy that I wouldn’t swear under oath that the two of them are even in the same place at the same time.
All of this would be plenty bad enough on its own, but I haven’t even gotten to the songs. Remember the famous maxim from Bob Fosse and many others that “the time to sing is when your emotional level is just too high to speak anymore, and the time to dance is when your emotions are just too strong to only sing about how you feel?” Not here. Here, characters sing when they’re bored and need something to do, and they dance when they remember that a camera is pointing at them, recording their humiliation. The music is an endless drone of flat synth pop, and the lyrics will make you pray for nuclear winter. The first big ensemble number, “The Luv (The Bounce)” (they did not, for some reason, give a special Razzie for Worst Song Title), opens with the tender and poetic observation that “[a]ll the girls can be shakin’ in the bounce tonight / gonna do it like we do when the bounce is right.” What exactly “the bounce” might be is never quite made clear; I am imagining an orgy in a bouncy castle.
I guess this is “the bounce”?
Later in the chorus, the singers elaborate: “And these fellas will be checkin’ out the ladies right / and if they’re in the mood then it’s on tonight” because what even is “scansion” or “lyricism” or “words that form coherent thoughts.” In Alexa’s second-act dance number about being a girl looking for a good time, Bailess must repeatedly sing and attempt to sell the nonsequitur “I’m gonna wish upon a star / do you think I’m goin’ too far?” Is wishing upon a star supposed to be a euphemism for something? Never mind, I don’t want to know. The low point of the whole enterprise is when Brandon tries to rap about picking up chicks and does not successfully hit a single beat.
On the other hand, the songs do factor into some glorious so-bad-it’s-good ineptitude. In “Forever Part of Me,” Justin and Kelly, searching for each other in a crowd, muse that they do not know each others’ names, then seconds later implore each other that “it’s not too late to call my name.” The film’s most unintentionally hilarious sequence occurs while Justin and Kelly sing their cliche-soup love ballad “Timeless.” You see, Justin and Kelly sing this song while riding around on a boat. That’s all they do. They ride around, staring at fixed points on the horizon, singing lyrics such as “Now you’re right here in my arms where you should stay” despite never coming within six feet of each other or, for that matter, looking at each other. It evokes the ten minutes of driving that open Birdemic. From the painful squints on both their faces, I assume they are staring directly into the sun, or perhaps at a precognitive vision of Guarini’s career.
THE GOOD
So am I ready to declare From Justin to Kelly one of the Worst? Not so fast. From here on out, I come to praise From Justin to Kelly, not to bury it. The movie has two redeeming elements that on their own are enough to push it into watchable territory.
The first is the relationship between Kelly’s non-bitchy friend Kaya and local line cook Carlos (Jason Yribar). Oh no, not their storyline, which like every other storyline in the film is too stupid for words. The romance between the characters, however, sparkles in a way that the Justin/Kelly pairing can’t even dream of (it helps that Yribar and Anika Noni Rose give the best performances in the film by a considerable margin). The scene in which Carlos takes Kaya Latin dancing is almost delightful; Rose imbues Kaya with a palpable nervous joy and perfectly captures the breathless wonder that can come from sharing a really good dance. Of course, the rueda music then gets rudely interrupted by some godawful pop thing because oh crap, it’s a musical, we have to make them sing!, and the scene drowns in the toilet, but the point is that it worked, if only for a little while. Yribar’s Carlos, meanwhile, doesn’t exactly radiate sex appeal, but he’s Antonio Banderas compared to every other male character. At least the man knows how to make a real move.
The second saving grace is Eddie (Brian Dientzen), Brandon and Justin’s dorky third-wheel friend who is in Miami or possibly Fort Lauderdale to finally meet his chat room girlfriend in the flesh. Dientzen understands not only the sort of movie he is in, but how to make the most of being in that sort of movie. He plays Eddie with over-the-top earnestness and cluelessness that just barely stays on the side of charming rather than irritating. All three times I laughed at points where the movie wanted me to laugh, they were at lines spoken by Eddie. The scene in which Eddie is confronted by the jealous boyfriend (Justin Gorence) of one of Brandon’s flings should be nails on a blackboard given its idiot premise, but Dientzen and Gorence aw-shucks their way through their inane lines with such enthusiasm that it feels like they are writing their own From Justin to Kelly callback script in the moment. When Eddie finally meets his online flame Lizzie (Toi Svane Stepp), she knows he’s the one by his email address: “all4captainpicard@deeplife.com.” I would lay down my life for Eddie. Unfortunately, we do not live in the universe where this movie is called From Eddie to Lizzie and covers the full story of their Xena forum flirtations.
There’s also something weirdly compelling about watching Justin and Kelly – both of whom are dumber than bags of hammers – try and try and try to figure out the Mystery of their Truly Inexplicable Communication Problems. The movie stakes a great deal on the audience believing that these two were meant to be together, and honestly, they’ve got me. Their anti-chemistry is so powerful that it very nearly circles back around to chemistry. Their mutual doltishness also means that neither of them have a chance in hell at a functioning relationship with anyone else, so why not each other? Everyone deserves a little happiness, even total doofuses.
Justin, forgetting he isn’t in Twilight, about to take a bite out of Kelly, cosplaying a jellyfish
Look, From Justin to Kelly was never going to be a masterpiece. Its script is brainless and its songs an insult to the concept of a musical. But there’s enough sincerity animating this creature of crass hypercommercialism that, in spite of itself, the movie grows a heart. Given the heartless void whence it sprung, that’s reason enough to celebrate it.
Quality of Movie: 1/5.
Quality of Experience: 3.5/5. Not transcendent or insane enough to become a bad movie classic like The Room or Fateful Findings, but a solid selection for a single bad movie watch party.
Mandy Albert teaches high school English and watches movies – mostly bad, occasionally good – in the psychedelic swamplands of South Florida. She is especially fond of 1970s horror and high-sincerity, low-talent vanity projects. You can listen to her and her husband talk about Star Trek: Enterprise on their podcast At Least There’s a Dog!