I love cheesy movies. I love high school movies. I loved High School Musical, 1 and 2–haven’t seen 3 (yet). So when I got the chance to see local (Round Rock) band The Daze in the partially-shot-in-Austin movie Bandslam, which comes out this Friday, I was excited. Love me a good high school movie.
Well, at least the red carpet performance by The Daze was fun: what I’d call dizzy rock, loud and youthful and energetic despite the million-degree heat they were jamming in.
The movie, on the other hand, simply left me in a daze. I checked my watch halfway through to see how much longer I’d be required to sit and watch the mopey lead actor make eyes at hottie songstress Aly of Aly & AJ fame while also picking up an unlikely girlfriend in Vanessa Hudgens, who did her best to be goth-outsider-esque, not cute and perky, but simply cannot hide her true nature. Random appearances by “the paralyzed dude from Friday Night Lights,” who is far shorter in real life than one would imagine, did nothing to help the nonexistent character development in the movie. Rather than give the characters depth and dimension, the film relied on high school stereotypes to fill in the character development the script simply didn’t. And this is coming from a girl who enjoyed The Ugly Truth with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, which features a scene where twins wrestle in a pool of jello.
At least there’s something to love about seeing hometown spots on the big screen: most of the high school scenes were filmed at my alma mater, so I enjoyed being like, “ooh, I had a class in that computer lab!” and “oh, that’s where we hung out after school!” But few will have the same nostalgic experience. Fans of The Bobby Bones Show (96.7 KISS FM) will enjoy seeing much of Bobby Bones in the closing scenes at the actual Bandslam competition, as he emcees the event. Other than that, there’s not much I can say for the movie itself.
The good news: Austin/RR band The Daze play a rival band in the final scenes of the movie, at the Bandslam competition. Their original single “Blizzard Woman Blues” is featured in the movie and included on the soundtrack. Their brand new CD “Straightjacket Hymns” is available at Waterloo Records. They’ve got a gig Friday night at 7:30p at Jovita’s with Joker, another local band in the movie. Free admittance with a ticket stub from the movie, $2 otherwise