For any number of reasons, people love giving other people various forms of advice. Whether it's because such people come off as being know-it-alls or simply someone who seems the exception to the rule or one who is no longer up to date in their information, however, the recipients of such advice often ignore those dispensing it.
Such rejection usually originates somewhere in childhood once kids start realizing that not everything that their parents or other adults tell them is the truth, such as an ugly or exaggerated face getting "stuck that way" or the notion of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny being real.
Of course, some stern advice, such as not running with scissors lest you risk the possibility of poking your eye out, is true. Yet, when kids get a bit older, they simply reject any such advice just because they're seemingly genetically pre-programmed to do so and thus become defiant and consciously or unconsciously decide not to listen to anything any authority figure might tell them.
All of which proves troublesome when teens and young adults don't recall that at some time in their lives they were told "There's no such thing as a free lunch," or the granddaddy of all such advice, "If sounds too good to be true, it probably is." The result is that they fall prey to the "get rich quick" schemes that populate ads in newspapers and magazines, TV infomercials and the latest rip-offs, websites that promise beaucoup money for little work or effort.
Such ignorance of better wisdom certainly hasn't escaped the fertile imagination of novelists and screenwriters, with the results being pictures such as "Wall Street" and "The Firm" where young, but driven characters find out the hard way that great sounding offers come with a plethora of attached strings and ensuing problems. The fun of such stories is in watching Bud Fox or Mitch McDeere slowly but surely figuring out what's going on and then trying to extricate themselves from the "too good to be true" situation.
While the character of Luke McNamara in Universal Pictures' release of "The Skulls" apparently didn't have any parents around to offer such advice, he's yet another cinematic character who blindly goes down such a trail only to discover that it's populated with all sorts of nasty characters and assorted problems. Unfortunately, the same can be said about the movie itself, a college-based twist on "The Firm" that's the second film this year - the first being "Mission to Mars" - that elicits laughs from the audience at all of the wrong times (during its serious/dramatic/suspenseful moments).
Unlike that earlier Brian De Palma film, however, one has to wonder to some small extent whether director Rob Cohen ("Daylight," "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story") and screenwriter John Pogue ("U.S. Marshals") are in on the joke in a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" sort of fashion.
After all, are we supposed to take everything that's present or occurs - including a gothic-style mansion complete with Vegas style lighting and theatrical effects or a scene where an upper-crust son runs into his rich father's office and nervously exclaims, "I just killed someone in the ritual room" - seriously? If so, the filmmakers have a big problem on their hands, especially considering that the latter moment generated the biggest laughs in a scene that presumably wasn't designed to do so.
Then again, the film has enough other problems that the unintentional comedy is perhaps an unfortunate (or then again, fortunate) byproduct of loose/sloppy filmmaking. For instance, for a "secret" society, the Skulls are a rather conspicuous organization as presented here, what with the huge skull emblem on the top of their gothic mansion, the parties they throw with female "entertainment" brought in from the outside, and the physical branding of their members (conveniently, but not so inconspicuously covered by expensive watches that go hand in hand with the expensive cars and housing that certainly wouldn't draw any undo attention to the members).
The result of such logic problems - and there are plenty more, including the stupidity of such an organization keeping a tape of its members murdering someone, let alone storing the tape off the premises where it potentially could be accidentally discovered and/or stolen - is that they diminish the film's suspense quotient by constantly distracting the viewer by the overall inanity that occurs.
For a film to have an overall structure and aura of riveting suspense, the audience needs to be completely wrapped up in the proceedings. Here, those problems prevent that from occurring, although to be fair, the film does offer a few such moments that should properly "goose" the audience.
Much like "The Firm" - from which this film liberally borrow elements such as the protagonist turning up the stereo so that he can inform his significant other that they've been bugged, and a character being blackmailed with sex photos to make him play along with the organization's plans - the story follows the now traditional arc of temptation, acceptance and slow discovery of the truth.
Unlike that film, however, this one never allows that protagonist - decently played by Joshua Jackson (the "Mighty Ducks" films, TV's "Dawson's Creek") considering the lackluster character construction and development - to take much of a proactive role in remedying his problem. Audiences love characters that find clever ways to get out of such situations and defeat the villains, but this film offers little of that.
While Luke finally does take action, the whole bit about his hometown (and apparently seasoned surveillance expert) friends helping him isn't that inventive and instead turns out to be another of the film's more absurd moments. After all, if this gothic mansion is loaded with surveillance cameras (we see many instances of them), wouldn't they catch sight of his slacker friends doing the whole James Bond/Tom Clancy espionage bit inside their building?
The saving grace/partially redeeming quality of such nonsense is that it actually turns the film into somewhat of a campy experience where the audience seems to get a kick - and a laugh or two - out of the sheer stupidity of what transpires. Whether you'll have the same reaction isn't certain (it could be one of those crowd-induced things), but at least for me it turned what was otherwise an increasingly bad film into something of a guilty pleasure. That's especially true since the film contains so many preposterously inane moments, including a supposedly serious, old-fashioned duel, as well as a closing, heritage-related line that's something of a rip-off of a scene from "The Empire Strikes Back" (with both films having characters named Luke).
Beyond Jackson, the performances are generally okay for a film like this, although the villains and "good guys" are too clear-cut to give the film a much-needed air of uncertainty, let alone the performers much of a chance to do anything with their characters.
Paul Walker ("She's All That," "Varsity Blues") plays the typical silver spooned young man who isn't happy about his posh lifestyle and nearly succumbs to the "dark side" before figuring out what's right, while Leslie Bibb ("Private Parts," TV's "Popular") and Hill Harper ("In Too Deep," "He Got Game") are present as Luke's doubting girlfriend and roommate respectively. Craig T. Nelson ("Devil's Advocate," "Poltergeist") hams it up as the head Skull, while William Petersen ("Manhunter," "Fear") and Christopher McDonald ("Flubber," "Leave it to Beaver") appear as his associates.
Although the film has a few decent moments, they alone can't turn this into a classic thriller. While some viewers may get a kick out of just how silly and inane the proceedings become, the plethora of logic problems, the almost non-existent proactive nature of the "hero," and the fact that it's not much more than a weak twist on the underlying "too good to be true" plot of superior pictures such as "The Firm" means that you might want to take our following advice.
Unless you're in the mood for some presumably unintentional, campy "fun," you'll probably want to skip this picture. On the other hand, since "The Skulls" is absurdly goofy enough to qualify, at least partially, as a guilty pleasure, you may just find it to your demented liking (although you won't respect yourself afterwards for doing so). As such, the film earns a rating of 4 out of 10.
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