MINUTEMEN [NR]
review by Robert Newton
It’s no Back To The Future, but this Disney Channel movie is still somewhat fun, even if it does pander a bit to the ‘tweens. It’s about three baby-faced high school kids named Virgil (Jason Dolley), Charlie (Luke
Benward) and Zeke (Nicholas Braun) who build a time machine in the school’s basement so that they can spare their fellow geeks regular humiliation and, of course, benefit socially from knowing what’s going to happen before it does.
The biggest drawback of this genre-bender that mixes comedy, action and sci-fi, is that we also know what’s going to happen before it does. The teleplay, by first-timer John Killoran, shows both signs of his inexperience and the half-hearted involvement of story writers David Diamond and David Weismann. The duo has done much better in the past with the under-appreciated Ghostbusters would-be, Evolution. Here, they throw together a lot of science-y talk that their young cast can barely say, let alone comprehend (and really, guys, even a very tiny black hole nearby would not give even really really smart kids enough time to stop it, as if). And what’s with all the “adults are retards” attitude? Uncle Walt would have locked these guys in “It’s A Small World” until they laid off it (or committed suicide by the second hour).
The best part of the movie, though, is the sunny and hyperkinetic cast. Even if director/TV merc Lev Spiro doesn’t quite have a handle on this cookie-cutter rush job, the kids sure do enjoy their day in the sun. Luke Benward (of the oo-ick flick How To Eat Fried Worms) lays it on wonderfully thick as the skipped-a-few-grades brainiac, and the girls will surely go ga-ga for the dreamy Jason Dolley (of Disney’s show “Cory In The House”). He’s no Zac Efron, and it’s yet-to-be-seen if he’ll make it like Disney TV vets Hilary Duff and Shia LaBeouf, but helps make the ride an enjoyable enough one, even if it doesn’t quite get up to 88 mph.
*SPECIAL FEATURES: Never-before-seen extended ending; Featurette - “The Making Of ‘Minutemen’: A Trip Back In Time; Music Video - “Run It Back Again” (performed by Corbin Bleu)
*TRIVIA TIDBIT: The way-stupid school vice principal is named Mr. Tolkan, after James Tolkan, the actor who played the chrome-domed stickler, Mr. Strickland in Back To The Future.
