Totally Awesome

Product Description Remember 80?s movies? Let VH-1 take you back to a time when the hair was big and the shorts were small. From the co-creator of Chappelle?s Show, this hilarious send-up of 1980's teen movies has it all - the music, dancing, the fashion and, of course, the lingo. Whether you were preppy or new wave, this movie will be awesome, Totally Awesome. Amazon.com As Ben Stein notes in his introduction, Totally Awesome has a lot in common with "the great teen movies of the 1980s," like Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Karate Kid, and Teen Wolf. (To that list, you can add Pretty in Pink, Soul Man, Weird Science, and Some Kind of Wonderful.) He doesn't let on that it's a spoof, presenting it as a lost classic from 1986. As with Footloose--or 1990's Beverly Hills 90210--two siblings move to a new town just in time for the school year. In this case, Charlie (Mikey Day) and Lori (Dominique Swain) relocate from Pennsylvania to California. He's a senior, she's a junior. She wants to dance. He just wants to be cool, like Kipp (Joey Kern) and girlfriend Kimberly (Brittany Daniel). Naturally, dancing is not allowed. As expected, the two plucky teens find ways to achieve their goals. Just as predictable as the plot is the dialogue, which couldn't be clunkier, and the acting, which couldn?t be more over-the-top (Swain's screaming, for instance, get old fast). Still, like the Scary Movie series it emulates, there's a laugh or two to be had, and Day is a likable lead. Written and directed by Neil Brennan ( Half Baked, Chappelle's Show), this VH1 production features 1980s tunes from the likes of A-Ha, Cinderella, Wang Chung, and Katrina and the Waves, along with appearances from Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan, James Hong, and Tone-Loc performing "Crazy Stuff," the prototype for "Wild Thing." --Kathleen C. Fennessy