 |
By Woodrow J. Hinton
|
The Mod Squad
|
It's funkadelic soundtrack kicks into gear immediately. A youthful, dance-floor army throbs without abandon. Here is a moviemade postcard for sex, drugs and Rock & Roll. From its opening scene, set in an after-hours rave located in a Los Angeles parking garage, director Scott Silver's high-spirited The Mod Squad flaunts its contemporary/retro style. Music provides a steady backdrop for dialogue. A greenish tint hangs over the film. Quick edits blend together with high-speed footage and slow-motion imagery. It leaves little doubt that The Mod Squad is a movie that places priority on eye candy.
For a film caught in Hollywood's fixation with '70s nostalgia -- from The Brady Bunch movies to TV's That '70s Show; plans for an upcoming Charlie's Angels film to Peter Biskind's tell-all on 1970s cinema, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls -- The Mod Squad tackles nostalgia with modern-day zeal. Pulling its plot from the ABC-TV cop show and coloring its production with the low-budget spirit of Jack Hill films such as Coffy, Switchblade Sisters and Foxy Brown, The Mod Squad emerges as an arty attempt at white exploitation cinema. For a studio action movie -- the marketing package that Silver's film finds itself placed -- The Mod Squad is one of the most adventurous Hollywood films to hit theaters in some time. It's an infectious movie experiment that works playfully well.
TV savages will already know the plot: A rainbow trio of underage crime fighters -- Linc (Omar Epps), an African American with a strong anti-establishment attitude; Julie (Claire Danes), the vulnerable blonde; and Pete (Giovanni Ribisi), a rich outcast tossed out of his Beverly Hills home -- cut a deal with the law and go undercover to bust a ring of villains preying on L.A.'s club kids. For Capt. Greer (Dennis Farina), the squad's unofficial mentor, it's a win-win situation.
"These kids can get into a thousand places we can't," Greer tells his cynical colleagues. Working without guns, badges or police backup, his modish squad of undercover agents have their drawbacks.
Mining the TV-land gold mine for big-screen adaptations often turns out to be a cinematic wasteland. So it's too easy to discard Silver's big-screen The Mod Squad on the trash pile of awful TV remakes such as The Flintstones, McHale's Navy and The Avengers. Of course, whatever nostalgia benefit accompanies the genre is lost when the show is mostly forgotten. It's been 26 years since ABC ended the series' five-year run in 1973. No doubt, The Mod Squad's young target audience never even heard of the original squad: Peggy Lipton, Michael Cole and Clarence Williams III, although it's a familiar plot for anyone who ever watched 21 Jump Street.
The appeal of Silver's Mod Squad update has little to do with trips down memory lane. Its core strength lies in its effervescent update of a TV-friendly story line.
Dirty cops are the villains. There are drug drops at a secluded private airfield and secret meetings in abandoned warehouses. The Mod Squad is a movie that makes fun of its own TV cop show clichés. It's key to the film's best joke: A self-effacing attitude that doesn't hesitate to make fun of itself. Dramatically, Silver's Mod Squad (from a screenplay by Stephen Kay, Kate Lanier and Silver) throws itself into its story with reckless abandon. There's little setup. The action simply kicks into gear. It's as if Silver pretended he had a one-hour TV show format to tell the film's story.
Squint your eyes, block off the surrounding sea of seats and The Mod Squad blurs into a funky hybrid of an old Quinn-Martin production, a weird mixture of Charlie's Angels, Police Woman, Mannix and The Streets of San Francisco jazzed with a pulsating soundtrack and big-screen production values. Still, The Mod Squad's tongue remains firmly planted inside its cheek. When Linc's treasured car, a 1972 Lincoln Continental green metallic convertible, gets caught in a car wash with its top down, you know that The Mod Squad will stop at nothing for a laugh.
Intentionally threadbare against its digitally enhanced peers, The Mod Squad emerges as an anti-action action-movie. It's worlds apart from special-effects driven behemoths such as Armageddon, The Rock, Con Air and Enemy of the State. In the arena of action blockbusters, The Mod Squad is a 10-pound weakling. But what it lacks in computer-generated imagery, The Mod Squad makes up for in youthful enthusiasm.
Maybe it's the film's likable leads. Much of its energy flows from a distinct visual style and indie attitude. Of course, the fact that The Mod Squad flaunts its squalid Hollywood Boulevard setting and plays up its sex, drugs and Rock & Roll context, boosting its counter-culture pedigree. It's a refreshing cinematic breather after being blockbusted. Here is a film that drips with so much low-budget energy that any digital splash would only get in its way.
Silver (who made his filmmaking debut with johns, a drama about Los Angeles street hustlers) infuses Mod Squad with an indie spirit. It makes gritty use of its Los Angeles settings. Flashing a visual style (courtesy of cinematographer Ellen Kuras) that is both retro and contemporary, Silver's Mod Squad becomes the most rare of studio features: a distinct movie unlike others.
Still, without special effects to grip one's attention, a film's cast takes greater priority. Really, if you don't buy into the fact that this squad is mod, then, the film is lost.
After a wave of forgettable performances in recent youth films -- really, can we even talk about performances in movies like Simply Irresistible and Varsity Blues while keeping a straight face? -- it's surprising just how on-target The Mod Squad is. Epps (Higher Learning and Scream 2) stands out as a classic leading man. He's Hollywood handsome. A stoic loner. A solid center to the film's intentionally flimsy storytelling. With his strong physical presence and bedroom eyes, Epps brings plenty of on-screen attitude as Linc. C'mon, would you even want to see Will Smith in this role? Epps, a young actor with a limited profile, takes full advantage of his Mod Squad showcase. Epps sprints with his performance.
The source of The Mod Squad's self-effacing spirit belongs to Ribisi. He is a lovable fool. Vulnerable. Innocent. A likable smart-ass. Ribisi has enjoyed more thoughtful roles in films such as Saving Private Ryan and subUrbia, but as The Mod Squad's Pete, Ribisi gets to run full throttle as the film's charming monkey boy. He's perfect comic relief. It's funny just to hear Ribisi say, "Dude, we're undercover."
Still, it's Danes who ultimately steals The Mod Squad's show. Watching her on-screen, portraying Julie with the adult weariness that has so far evaded other young actresses such as Winona Ryder and Drew Barrymore, it's clear Danes has come a long way from her funked-up Juliet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo and the frail Beth opposite Ryder in Little Women.
Career prospects had begun to look bleak for Danes. Her waifish role in Bille August's Les Misérables was mostly forgettable. As the poster girl for the young and disenchanted -- thanks to her role as high school angst queen Angela Chase on the ABC drama My So-Called Life -- Danes acquired a stifling stigma. What can one do after being called the most talented actress of her generation?
So she filled her big-screen bio with supporting roles in Little Women, How to Make an American Quilt and Home for the Holidays. Attempts at more adult characters in The Rainmaker and U-Turn made little impact. A higher profile in To Gillian on her 37th Birthday went nowhere. Only William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet and the art-house drama Polish Wedding, where Danes played a single mother, offer proof of her acting talents. Sure, Danes is pretty and, OK, she comes off really smart on-screen. But she was also coming off as emotionally vacant. None of her film work matched the deep, complex and mercurial nature of TV's So-Called Life.
There is a burden to growing up in the public eye. And it's tough being initially labeled a hot ingenue. Maybe the surprise isn't so much that Danes finally emerges with a mature, compelling performance, proof positive she's capable of making the turn from teen heartthrob to adult actress. The surprise is that she accomplished the feat within the context of an arty action hybrid like The Mod Squad.
So this is the future of young Hollywood: Donning leather pants and kicking butts in action flicks. While The Mod Squad unspools, watching Danes' strong and confident crime fighter performance, it's clear there are dozens of other worse choices she could have made. It's not that being an action babe is such a bad thing. After all, think Linda Hamilton and her Schwarzenegger-like biceps in Terminator 2 as further evidence for a strong action-female, although The Mod Squad's exploitation spirit probably puts Danes closer to Pam Grier. Like Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Danes' Mod Squad antics make it hip for young women to kick butt. Danes wears her newfound maturity well with her dark denim hip-huggers and wraparound shades.
Sure, The Mod Squad is a movie big on fashion synergy. Here, there are moments when the clothes seem to make the movie. Flip through a magazine and see Danes in her Mod Squad finest: a dark denim jacket and red peasant blouse. Browse the aisles at the Beverly Hills Macy's and peruse Levi's 1/Mod collection. It's all here, moviemade fantasy with a real-life price tag. From Julie's red patch leather jacket to Linc's clunky leather belt. Run out of the store dressed like your heroes. Cool clothes don't always make the movie (watch last summer's The Avengers for proof). The Mod Squad seems to flaunt its sense of style with full promotional gusto. Thankfully, there are roles to be found inside the clothes.
Danes' Julie comes off as a believably strong, confident and complex woman. Despite her retro fashion and waifish beauty, The Mod Squad allows Danes to be more than just eye candy. Julie is a strong female character, a young woman who's made some mistakes and still gets her life back on track.
Granted, The Mod Squad is not Danes' Boogie Nights, meaning the type of break-out film that gave Mark Wahlberg such credibility. The Mod Squad is fluff. A funky feature film experiment on 1970s police dramas. It is an Electric Kool-Aid Action Test. And while some of its mind-warping images give The Mod Squad an edgy, slick, against-conformity context, it's movie fluff just the same. The Mod Squad won't bring Danes the indie credibility of a Christina Ricci. And chances are it won't acquire the type of box-office boost that Kate Winslet gained from Titanic. But The Mod Squad will separate Danes from the forgettable blonde mass of actresses such as Gretchen Mol, Monica Potter and Reese Witherspoon. The Mod Squad puts Danes closer in spirit to someone like Laura Dern who built her reputation with chancy roles in films such as Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet and Citizen Ruth. Of course, Dern allowed herself the occasional mainstream film like Jurassic Park along the way. For Danes, Mod Squad is the best creative compromise: an independent-minded film with commercial possibilities. She looks older here. Wiser. Gone are the little girl ponytail and freckled face. Her hair is a close-cropped bob of blonde streaks. It's that mysterious transition that happens publicly on-screen before audiences' eyes: Claire Danes has finally become a woman. She was always a kid actor playing adult stories. Now, she's an adult actress getting the chance to kick butt.
Movies have always struggled with their portrayal of young America. James Dean was the troubled outcast in Rebel Without a Cause. Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon danced mindlessly on the sand in Beach Blanket Bingo. Weepy melodrama was the priority for Love Story's young romance. Richard Linklater's 1991 Austin, Texas, odyssey Slacker coined a new word, and films such as Kevin Smith's Clerks, Gregg Araki's HIV-positive, lovers-on-the-lam, road movie The Living End and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho solidified Hollywood's stereotype of youth angst and cynicism.
Now, after a wave of mindless Generation Y dramadies such as She's All That, 200 Cigarettes and Cruel Intentions, only The Mod Squad attempts to portray the youth generation with substance and compassion. The reality of youth rebellion, protests against the Vietnam War and political issues such as the draft have faded, but The Mod Squad still manages to speak with a universal theme: the generation gap. So when Pete faces his Beverly Hills parents on their doorstep, asking for their help, The Mod Squad achieves a brief burst of dramatic substance. Sometimes, no matter how hard one tries, matters dissolve into an us-against-them confrontation.
Against recent youth-oriented storytelling, The Mod Squad takes the most sober look at life. Everything else, in comparison, is pure Hollywood fantasy.
The Mod Squad is what happens when the snooty kids from Clueless take a wrong turn with the law. Like the teen protagonists from Larry Clark's Kids, The Mod Squad manages to show a wild life that is less than glamorous. For an action movie that dares to be different, it's a successful experiment. (Rated R.)
CityBeat grade: B.
