Undiscovered

Undiscovered (Director: Meiert Avis)

Avis directed Far From Home, a 1989 movie starring Drew Barrymore. Other than that, it's been mainly Springsteen and U2 videos. Written by newcomer John Galt. Simpson dad Joe helped executive produce.

If there's any proof that the MTV influence is bad, just watch any of their "reality" shows that clog the airwaves in place of actual music that once was their bread and butter. MTV's revolutionary influence on pop culture also made names of the video directors (of course, when they played videos). For every David Fincher that has come out of the video world and into movies, there's about a thousand Michael Bays ready to make every movie "exciting" with their rapid-cut, out-of-focus, camera-shaking revelry.

Undiscovered is one of those films. Bringing on more unnecessary camera movement than a home video shot by a 6-year-old who just discovered the zoom lens, the movie concerns the rise and fall and rise of rocker Luke Falcon (Sky High's human torch Steven Strait), who gets high with a little help from his friends. Sometimes co-singer Clea (Ashlee Simpson) and potential flame Brier Tucket (fresh-faced Pell James, who had a small role in Broken Flowers) uses her modeling agent (Carrie Fisher, going for the Razzie) to hire hot girls to come out and pretend to be groupies. With some internet publicity and some other hyped fake interest, Falcon gets a record deal from hotshot exec Garret Schweck (Fisher Stevens, which makes this movie have twice the Fishers of normal movies--I'd like to see Carrie Fisher marry him, keep her last name as well as adopt his last name and become Carrie Fisher-Stevens, or even better, have him marry her and take her name...and become Fisher Fisher).

Of course, there's a love story, very half-baked, between Luke and Brier. Are movies at a point now where they don't even need to show that two people love each other, we're just supposed to swallow it when the two people say it at the end? The filmmakers say, "Eh, they'll get the point." I mean...for the whole movie Luke strikes out with Brier, then they have a makeout session (we're told), and they break up again, and then Brier decides she's going to leave L.A. to go to New York and not tell him. The love is burning up the screen! Oh, I know--because of some "romantic" train encounter involving lost gloves, then that's all a relationship needs. I'm sure eHarmony.com lists this kind of fantasy encounter as one of the compatability issues needed to get people together.

It feels like I'm in some sort of dream warp with this year. You can expect a lot of bad movies in one year, but 2005 has two years worth of bad movies and we're only in August.