Not the top 'Dog'

"Alpha Dog" is based on the true story of Jesse James Hollywood, one of the youngest people to appear on the FBI's Most Wanted List. With a plot like that, you would think that there is a lot of potential to be exciting, fresh and dramatic, but the movie fails on all three accounts. \nI found it to be a mixture between a bad gangsta video and an after-school special gone wrong with a bit of the "Three Stooges" thrown in.\nOne of the biggest problems that the movie has is that the audience laughs throughout the tough guy scenes. The movie has a soccer mom's SUV being borrowed with permission to do illegal deeds, a street thug who wears a tie to work as a salesman and a one-on-eight fight scene that turns in to a cheesy karate flick.\nNow granted, the second half of "Alpha Dog" is much better than the first half, but by that point it doesn't matter. It is hard to empathize with characters that you have spent an hour laughing at for overacting and underachieving.\nAll that being said, there is definitely an audience that will help this movie stay around for a while and make some serious money. That audience includes middle-school aged wannabe thugs who admire the drinking, smoking and swearing, but are not smart enough to realize that the whole movie is a farce. Or at least I hope it is, because if the movie is "real" to too many people out there, we need more than just AboveTheInfluence advertisements on TV. \nThere is one shining star in the movie: Justin Timberlake. Much like Eminem in "8 Mile," Timberlake gives a performance that surpasses what you expect going in. But, like Mr. Mathers, until Timberlake shines in a non-gangsta role, he may have just gotten lucky. \nTimberlake shows emotion, grows throughout the film and has depth -- everything you look for in a movie character. But one good character out of 20 does not make a film good -- it almost makes you feel sorry for Justin Timberlake, something not many of us ever thought we would do.\nThe movie is a bad gangsta video trying to "keep it real," but the closest they ever came to the hard streets of the Valley was at the mall sipping Orange Juliuses. If you are going to make a movie about life on the streets, at least talk to someone who has been there. And if you are going to have unlimited drinking, smoking and swearing, why go out of your way to limit the amount of skin we see?\n"Alpha Dog" is probably best enjoyed on a Friday night, sitting around in the basement smoking up and passing around bottles of cheap beer. But be warned, the end is a real buzz-kill.