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The Mod Squad

Reviewer Roundup 1.  Susan Granger review follows no stars 2.  Dustin Putman read the review 3.  Greg King read the review 4.  MrBrown read the review

Let's face it..."The Mod Squad" wasn't that cool when it was on ABC television 30 years ago (Sept.'68 to August '73) and it certainly hasn't improved with age. If anything, it's deteriorated - and today's teenagers, who are the target audience, weren't even alive when the series aired. For those who don't remember, "The Mod Squad" were juvenile delinquents - Peggy Lipton, Michael Cole, and Clarence Williams 3rd - who plea-bargained their way out of custody by agreeing to work with The Man fighting crime undercover. It was a counter-culture thing that appealed to the late '60s, early '70s mentality. This time 'round Claire Danes, Giovanni Ribisi, and Omar Epps are the teenagers who are enlisted to work as undercover police operatives, reporting to gruff but kindly Dennis Farina. The plot - and I use that word loosely - revolves around a cache of drugs that disappears from a police evidence locker. "The Mod Squad" is supposed to find it. "I'm getting too old for this," they moan, just as they did on the TV series, but it's a line that's far more believable when muttered by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in one of the many "Lethal Weapon" sequels. Basically, the dialogue is drivel. Written by Stephen Kay, Kate Lanier and Scott Silver, and directed by Mr. Silver, this film has nothing, absolutely nothing to recommend it except that it's short, so you only waste 94 minutes of your time. So, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Mod Squad" is a thudding 1. It's the Clod Squad. There is no excuse for a movie being quite this lame and stupid.

Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger