''Underclassman'' is a 2005 American action comedy film directed by Marcos Siega and starring Nick Cannon,

Shawn Ashmore Shawn Robert Ashmore (born October 7, 1979) is a Canadian actor. He is known for his roles as Bobby Drake / Iceman in the ''X-Men'' film series, Jake Berenson in the television series '' Animorphs'', Agent Mike Weston in the television drama ...

, Roselyn Sánchez, Kelly Hu,

Hugh Bonneville Hugh Richard Bonneville Williams (born 10 November 1963) is an English actor. He is best known for portraying Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, in the ITV historical drama series '' Downton Abbey''. His performance on the show earned him a n ...

, and

Cheech Marin :''The surname'' Marin ''is of Spanish language origin. In Spanish, it is spelled'' Marín'', with an acute accent on the'' í. Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin (born July 13, 1946) is an American actor, musician, comedian, and activist who gain ...

. It was released on September 2, 2005, had been originally set for a release in 2004. The film was a critical and box office disaster, receiving only a 6% rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

and grossing $5.6 million on a production budget of $25,000,000.

Plot

Tracy "Tre" Stokes ( Nick Cannon) is a 23-year-old bike cop working for the

Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal Police, police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the thir ...

. Tre dreams of being a police detective, like his late father, but his mentor Captain Delgado (

) believes he is not ready based on his reckless behavior. While playing basketball, Delgado is approached by a representative of the Mayor's office looking to place an undercover detective into the prestigious Westbury School after a student was killed at a party. Tre volunteers to go undercover, and Delgado reluctantly agrees to give him a chance. Tre's mark is Rob Donovan (

), whose name was written on a piece of paper at the scene of the crime. Attempting to befriend Rob on the basketball court after school, Tre learns about a local basketball tournament, the Blacktop Battle, which Rob is captaining for Westbury. Tre arrives at the Blacktop Battle where Westbury is being handily defeated by their crosstown rival. Joining the game, Tre wins the game and impresses Rob, but antagonizing his friends with his selfish play. The next day Tre learns of a party at the marina that Rob routinely throws, and shows up with a borrowed jetski for a race. When a former student and rival of Rob's shows up at the party there is a fight and Tre and Rob are thrown in jail where they form a bond. Tre soon discovers that at every high school party in the area a luxury car seems to be stolen. Tre plans a sting involving throwing his own party at Captain Delgado's home using the Captain's prized '65 Corvette Stingray, Juanita, as bait. Tre sees Rob steal the car, but allows him to escape instead of stopping him, resulting on him getting fired from the force. Continuing the investigation himself, Tre discovers that the cars have been housed at a warehouse on campus and that Rob and his friends have been forced to steal the cars against their will. Headmaster Felix Powers (

), realizing Tre is an undercover cop, enlists his co-conspirators to kidnap and murder Tre at the Blacktop Battle championship game. Tre is abducted along with Karen and they are brought to the campus warehouse to be killed while Powers goes to the docks to trade the stolen vehicles for drugs. Tre, with the help of backup, escapes and interrupts Powers’ drug deal and rescues Karen. Tre then kills Powers during a high speed boat chase in the harbor. In the end Tre graduates high school and is reinstated to the force.

Cast

* Nick Cannon as Tracy "Tre" Stokes * Roselyn Sánchez as Karen Lopez * Kelly Hu as Lisa Brooks * Ian Gomez as Det. Gallecki *

as Rob Donovan *

as Headmaster Felix Powers *

as Captain Victor Delgado * Johnny Lewis as Alexander Jeffries *Angelo Spizzirri as David Boscoe *Vishiss as Edward Murdock *Adrian Young as Jose *

Don McManus Don McManus (born November 8, 1959) (sometimes credited as Don R. McManus) is an American character actor of film and television. He became better known after his performance as Duncan in the ''Seinfeld'' episode “The Race”. Born in San Dieg ...

as Julian Reynolds * Mary Pat Gleason as Mrs. Hagerty * Peter Bryant as Michael Barry * Sam Easton as Oliver Horn *

Kaylee DeFer Kaylee Anne DeFer (born September 23, 1986) is a former American actress. She was known for her portrayals of Hillary Gold in '' The War at Home'', and of Ivy Dickens in ''Gossip Girl''. Early life DeFer was born in Tucson, Arizona. In 2003, she ...

as Des * Terry Chen as Sleepy Morris * Jamie Kaler as Beach Police Officer * Ben Cotton as Raver * Zak Santiago as Anderson * Dan Shea as Weston * Sarah Jane Morris as Jamie (uncredited)

Production

In June 2003, music video director Marcos Siega was announced as director of Underclassman. Shanwn Ashmore joined the cast in August 2003.

Reception

Box office

''Underclassman'' was released on

Labor Day Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United ...

weekend (September 2) in 2005, and performed poorly at the box office opening at number 11 with $3,393,610. Overall ''Underclassman'' earned just $5,655,459 against a budget of $25 million in seven weeks of release.

Critical response

''Underclassman'' received universal negative reviews from critics. On

, only 6% of the critics gave it positive write-ups with the consensus: "Despite the appealing presence of Nick Cannon, ''Underclassman'' is a shopworn knockoff of both '' Beverly Hills Cop'' and '' 21 Jump Street''." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

the film has received 20 poor and 5 medium reviews for an overall score of 19. ''Underclassman'' is currently the sixth worst reviewed film on Metacritic released in 2005.

References

External links

* * * * {{Marcos Siega 2005 films 2005 comedy films 2005 drama films 2005 comedy-drama films 2000s high school films 2000s police comedy films 2000s teen comedy films American comedy-drama films American crime comedy films American high school films American police detective films American teen comedy films Fictional portrayals of the Los Angeles Police Department Films directed by Marcos Siega Films scored by BT (musician) Films set in Los Angeles Films shot in Vancouver Miramax films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films