Text size:

From Justin To Kelly

By Jan Stuart | STAFF WRITER

June 23, 2003

Justin and Kelly

(PG). Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini, freshly scrubbed and pressed from TV's "American Idol," splash and sing on the teen-swept beaches of Miami. Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that invented the Betty Grable musical, is responsible for this wan and wantonly unhip descendant. 1:22 (thematic elements, sensuality). At area theaters.

You couldn't help but be impressed. The rain was coming down by the bucket load Friday, the opening day of "From Justin to Kelly." And yet as early as 9:40 a.m., the line at a theater off Union Square was already snaking around the block.

Well, so what if most everybody there was waiting to get into "The Hulk?" For the nine Hulk-o-phobes who filed into "From Justin to Kelly" and settled into their own rows, the air hadn't been charged with as much electricity since the opening day of "Spice World."

Here, at last, was an opportunity to see two shining comets of TV's "American Idol" on the big screen. Imagine, a spring break-themed teen musical tailored to the talents of Kelly Clarkson, of the trembling-teary- Britney-Spears-y vocal school, and Justin Guarini, the Slim-Fast version of Richard Simmons. Does summer movie- going get any better?

Rather than saddle the stars with anything so burdensome as a plot, writer Kim Fuller and director Robert Iscove have tailored an 80-minute cavalcade of music-video-style numbers, strung together with little fits of dialogue for pretty, gym-toned performers who are given the names of characters. Kelly Clarkson plays Kelly ("My friends call me Kelly") and Justin Guarini is Justin, two PG-rated youths who meet while on spring break in Miami Beach, a place where men with body hair and women who wear more than a size 10 are apparently quarantined at the airport.

Kelly and Justin both come accompanied by two friends, each of whom will be paired off with suitable mates before the end. Everyone, that is, but Kelly's best chum, Alexa (Anika Noni Rose), a blond Texas vixen who does everything she can to keep the two stars apart. Justin has a rambunctious womanizing friend and a computer geek friend in a pith helmet who would appear to be modeled after the Jim Hutton character in "Where the Boys Are," still the "Grand Hotel" of spring-break romantic comedies.

The Florida air is heady with the scent of coconut sunblock and umbrella cocktails, as synchronized chorus lines of kids in bathing suits romp to one inoffensive bubble-gum tune after another. Not since "No, No Nanette" has there been so many production numbers with flying beach balls. I don't know which was my favorite, the one where sultry Alexa high- kicks atop a bar with a buff male chorus line that looks to have been trucked in from a South Beach disco, or the love duet that ends with Kelly and Justin sailing off into a smog-polluted Miami sunset.

"The Hulk" may have brawn and heft, but "From Justin to Kelly" has brine and chutzpah.