Buss a Kapp
I
guess now that I’m getting into my late twenties I’m finally old enough to play
a teenager in a Hollywood movie. So I
figured I’m also old enough to write youth-oriented films that exploit existing
trends or make lame attempts to start new ones.
I have yet to see either of the Step Up films, but am planning a double
bill one of these rainy days. So my
frame of reference here is probably a little outdated in that I’m drawing on
Save The Last Dance and stuff. But whatevs, here’s
my youth-oriented film. Enjoy.
Tyrese
plays Skill Hudgens, a high school student with
untapped potential growing up in the ghettos of Detroit. The film opens with one of his teachers
pulling him aside in the corridors of the high school and telling him that if
he just tried a little harder he could easily have straight As
and go to college. Skill blows his
teacher off telling him “My future is on the street.”
Skill
is greeted by a pack of his homeboys who show him all sorts of respect and they
head out to the school parking lot and pile into an old car and start cruising
around. They see the East Side Boys all
leaning menacingly against a wall in an outdoor basketball court. Skill’s crew all pile out of the car and line
up and the two groups stare at each other for a couple seconds and then the
leader of the East Side Boys steps forward and asks if
they came here to play or to check them out, to which Skill retorts “Neither,
we came here to win.”
Rap
music starts playing and they then all start taking out Pog
equipment. They put down their wagers of
decorated milk caps and each take out their bling-blinged
slammers (which is the hard coin used to try and flip the decorated milk caps)
and a gruelling game of Pog ensues. This stuff will all be filmed in MTV
hyperbole so that when a player slams his slammer down on the little tower of
milk caps it makes a big thunderous noise and sometimes the force wave even
knocks guys back a bit. The milk caps
fly into the air and we get all sorts of well-lit slow motion shots of them
spinning in mid air. The caps are all
decorated with ghetto symbols and portraits of famous rappers and stuff like
that.
After
several rounds shown in super-exciting MTV montage-o-vision Skill has won most
of the rival crew’s milk caps and mocks them saying that he’d keep playing but
he doesn’t have anymore room in his pockets for the caps he wins off them. He tells his posse to head out and they all
get in the car together leaving the East Street Boys behind looking glum and defeated.
While
in the car the runt of Skill’s group, Lil Stix
(played by Bow Wow) starts complaining to Skill that they could’ve cleaned them
out. Skill tells him that it’s good
courtesy to leave your opponents with something or else situations turn ugly. They cruise around for awhile and let Skill
out at his house, which is a dilapidated shack where he lives with his
alcoholic mother.
We
cut back to the basketball court later at night and Lil Stix
comes out of the shadows and aggressively challenges the East Side Boys. They play Pog until
the East Side Boys are down to their last caps.
Lyra, the leader East Side guy (played by The
Game), is reluctant to wager a cap decorated with a picture of his own dead
mother, but his homeboys encourage him saying he can still turn the game
around. But Lyra
loses, Lil Stix cleans them
out and taunts them about it. As Lil Stix is walking off Lyra pulls a
pistol on Lil Stix and demands the cap with his
mother back. Lil Stix
just tells him he lost it fair and square and Lyra
shoots him dead and takes the cap back.
The
next day at high school, Skill is pulled aside by the same teacher who said he
believed in him the day before and starts asking him what he’s gotten himself
into and of course Skill doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then two cops step into view and they go to
the principle’s office. The cops just
hassle him about the death of his friend and Skill cries but they show him no
sympathy.
Once
the cops figure there’s nothing they can get out of Skill, they just give him a
menacing stare and leave the room. The
teacher tells Skill, somebody else is here to see him and this well-dressed man
(Matthew Modine) comes in to pitch his university to
Skill and offering him a Pog scholarship. The university rep tells him he’ll be able to
play his game at the highest possible level and away from the ‘troubles’ of the
ghetto. Skill is too crestfallen to make
a decision and so Modine leaves him his card. Skill is walking home and his crew drive by
saying they’re going to go kill the East Side Boys and Skill rejects the
violence and gets called a pussy and a traitor.
Skill
goes home and his mother is passed out drunk on the sofa. He makes himself dinner and hears on the
radio that all his homeboys and most of the East Side Boys died in the
shootout. He takes out the business card
and calls Modine.
Next
thing Skill is being shown around the posh Ivy League campus by Matthew Modine and the tour ends when Skill arrives at his new dorm
where all the Pog jocks live together in luxury. The leader of the Pog
dorm and Pog team captain Denton Winterspate
Feston III (played by Paul Walker) introduces himself and makes it clear he’s the big dog and makes subtle
jabs at Skill’s humble background.
Skill
is told that practice starts at 4 am the next morning and he better be there
and ready to perform. The next morning
Skill drags himself out of bed and bolts across campus
to the giant high-tech Pog training facility like the
one Ivan Drago trains in in
Rocky 4. Denton flips his slammer
at Skill’s balls which winds him and he falls to the ground and Denton berates
him for being 1 minute and 32 seconds late for first practice and again taunts
him saying “We’re not on hood time here, get yourself a real Rolex and learn
to be on time or don’t bother coming at all.”
They then start to train but when Skill takes
out his bling-bling slammer they all laugh at him and
tell him he’s out of his league. They
show him that they all have expensive slammers with corporate sponsors such as
Mercedes Benz brand aerodynamic slammers.
Chester (played by Ethan Suplee) is the one
fat but nice seeming guy on the team, but also that guy who’s status in the
group is shaky and so he never stands up to Denton. But Chester gives Skill his old Nike brand
athletic slammer as an act of kindness.
Of
course we then get a big training montage showing Skill learning to keep up in
the new Ivy League Pog world using their advanced
equipment. And we also get lots of shots
like Rocky 4 of some computer analyzing the team’s progress and all
sorts of bullshit C.S.I. style bullet-time shots of the milk caps flying
through the air and the computer showing Denton’s milk cap dispersal and slam
force increasing exponentially along with juxtaposed shots of Denton taking
steroids and Skill just exercising old school.
Then
comes their first big match and it seems the team is in high spirits and Skill
and Denton have learned to tolerate each other.
The team are all in their matching spandex leotards getting ready to
head into the big arena for their big first match of the season. Samantha (Keeley Hazell) a journalist for the campus university newspaper
pulls Skill aside to ask him some questions but then the questions start
turning into allegations about the behaviour of various team members as result
of steroids and Skill just blows her off and stays loyal to his team.
They
go in and the big match is done in music video montage mode. I think this will be one of those cheesy
movie situations where they get some big rap star (like Nelly) to perform live
at the college level sports event but then the whole match sequence is just a
music video set to his song. Skill at
first seems a little rattled by the new scale on which the game takes place in
a big arena with all sorts of strobe lights that make everything play out like
an action scene from Ultraviolet or something.
Skill’s
team wins and Denton announces that it’s celebration time. The team is then partying hard in an Eyes
Wide Shut party / kegger back at the Pog Team Frat House.
We see the team all making out with naked chicks wearing carnival masks
to objectify them and the whole dorm party area is this big ornate mansion only
with a bunch of kegs and shit all over the place and rap music blasting. Denton gets all grabby with one of the ladies
and she doesn’t seem into it and then later Skill sees her got off to the
bathroom and Denton follows her. He
comes out a few minutes later with some blood on his collar and gathers Chester
and a couple of the other team members with a serious look on his face. They all leave with only Skill and few of the
other teammates remaining at the party.
Skill goes downstairs and sees them loading a gym bag that obviously
contains a body into Denton’s SUV and driving off together.
Skill
wanders around not believing what he saw.
We then get more training / Pog match montage
action only with Denton always stink-eyeing Skill all the time. As Skill is leaving the futuristic training
facility one afternoon Samantha approaches him again and says a bunch of stuff
about how the team is evil and she senses that he’s not one of them. Skill tells her that she needs to talk to
Chester because he saw more but then in horror movie fashion, Denton suddenly
appears behind Skill with a big thunderclap noise to show that Samantha just
noticed him but we don’t know how long he’s been standing there (spoooooky). He says
something about the strength of the team and Samantha excuses herself and then
Denton makes some smug remark to Skill and struts off.
Then
we get a bunch of rushed plot developments to quickly ramp up the tension. Chester dies in a suspicious car wreck. Somebody alters Skill’s slammer so that he’d
sprain himself if he used it but he notices first. Skill bursts into the training facility all
furious and accuses Denton of doing it and Denton plays all innocent and the
coach tells Skill to go cool off. Skill
then bolts across campus and catches Samantha as she’s heading into the
university newspaper office and starts telling her about all the evil shit
that’s going down. She then suddenly
starts asking what he expects her to do, that Denton comes from a really
powerful family and she can’t just print accusations based on circumstantial
evidence from a student who comes from the ghetto and who has links to hood
shootings. While they’re arguing the
school newspaper office explodes behind them.
We
cut to a few hours later where a firefighter just tells them it was a burst gas
line, but Skill and Samantha know it wasn’t.
Skill says he knows how to prove all this stuff was Denton. Skill enters the high-tech training gymnasium
and sees the team practicing together.
Only Lyra, his old Pog
rival from the hood, is there practicing with them. Denton steps forward and tell Skill he’s been
replaced and his scholarship has been revoked and to get off campus
immediately. Skill looks over to the big
computer system that analyzes their Pog techniques,
then back at Denton and punches him and takes a handful of slammers out of his
pockets and flicks them all at the other guys on the team stunning them
momentarily and he then hits the lights off.
In the dark while they’re all fumbling around he runs over and takes the diskette with Denton’s data on it and bolts out
the door. Denton calmly gets up and says
“Campus security will get him.”
We
then get a footrace across campus as campus security chase him on seguays and he dodges and pulls manoeuvres such as grabbing
a pipe on the ceiling and lifting himself up so that the campus security guards
ram into each other and explode and stuff like that. Samantha pulls up and he jumps in her car and
the two speed off campus and he just says “Get me
to a computer.”
We
then cut to the big final match of the college Pog
season and Denton and Lyra and the team come out all
confident and then the rival team comes out and another celebrity guest cameo
happens when somebody like R&B singer Pink shows up to sing the national
anthem. Then as the first round is about
to start Skill kicks open the door and struts in, Denton is at first annoyed
for having his concentration broken but then gets a devilish grin on his face
when a bunch of cops all funnel into the room behind him and Denton demands
that Skill be arrested for trespassing.
Skill then tells Denton it’s he who is going to jail and does a Sherlock
Holmes / C.S.I. style explanation about how the fracturing of the girl’s
skull and the damage to Chester’s car engine and the gas line on the school
newspaper office all match his Pog striking technique
perfectly. Skill holds up the diskette
with Denton’s performance data on it and the cops all cuff Denton and most of
the other teammates for being accessories to murder etc. Denton pleads that they let him finish the Pog season and motions to the crowd gathered for
entertainment. Skill tells the crowd
they’ll get their entertainment and Skill and Lyra
then bust out their bling-bling hood slammers and
throw down for ruthless Pog match.
The
cops and the handcuffed teammates all stick around to watch and cheer as the 15
round Pog match between Skill and Lyra
goes down. It follows the standard
sports movie climax where it looks like the hero is losing and then Samantha
whispers to him “Finish him!” Skill then does a flip and slams his
slammer down so hard it knocks Lyra off his feet and
the announcer flips out saying nobody has ever won so many caps in a single
slam in the history of the sport. The
crowd goes wild and Skill embraces Samantha as the cops drag Denton and the
other teammates off and Lyra shakes his head in
defeat.
Cut
to closing rap music video credits.
If you liked this, here are some
other writings you may enjoy:
My attempt at writing a Mark Wahlberg
movie.
Da Four Oh 1:
Part Two
Ashton
Kutcher’s Top Gun (aka The Guardian)
The plot summary you have
read to disbelieve!