Pop culture becomes transparent

It's hard to fault a movie that offers nothing less than what it promises. "From Justin to Kelly," the movie made-for-profit and starring the original "American Idol" stars Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson, is a non-stop barrage of product placement, good-looking young people, dance scenes and finely-crafted pop tunes.\nThe storyline is acceptably thin, a fictional tale based on a push-and-pull relationship between Justin and Kelly while they are furloughed on Spring Break in Miami. Both of the prefab stars have two friends with them to act as comedic foils, alter egos and arch rivals in turn. In order to get from point A to point B, the crafty writers penned some of the most transparent segues short of a porno. When looked at in a historical context, this plot is an afterthought to the music, a common plague amongst rock operas, which this is. It's also completely forgivable when the music is good, and in this movie that's the matter of contention.\nI talked my weekend guest, Robert, into going with me to see "From Justin to Kelly" on the terms that I would pay for his ticket and he could get extremely toasted beforehand. We went into the film not begrudgingly, but inspired to have a good time. What we saw made us laugh, made us nauseous, made us somewhat lusty and pissed all within an hour and a half. In terms of a Sunday afternoon, that's not too bad.\nThough Robert is not often surprised by my taste in pop music (I mentioned afterwards how much better the movie would have been had it starred Justin Timberlake instead of Guarini), he was disappointed that I found one song of intelligence in the movie. This was the minor-key song shuffled and delivered by Kelly's fake antagonist and the film's resident slut, Alexa (Katherine Bailess), who sang a tasty number about wanting "to go too far" while doing the splits in a push-up bra and bikini bottom.\nUnfortunately, Alexa's number was the only song that tested the conventional formulas of pop. Justin and Kelly represent the extremely sanitized version of pop that is needed for the underage crowd now that Timberlake and Britney Spears fuck and drink. The "American Idol" grads merely present their faux images in swooping ballads and rehashed disco dance numbers.\nDespite some hilarious suburban white-boy rhyming and the inextricable, and hence interesting, dance routines, "From Justin to Kelly" failed to live up to my "Beach Blanket Bingo" hopes. This kind of camp tends to get better with age though, for now, it must stand for something.