I watched the entire movie without stopping and deleting it from the DVR. That's about the best thing I can say about "Totally Awesome".
The thing about spoofs is that they only work if they consistently satirize their targets. They need to find humor in parts of the original films that weren't "funny" and find humor in them. This is the biggest flaw of "Totally Awesome". The movie is just lame setups, horrendous overacting and a few interesting ideas that never quite hit the mark. There is very little actual satire. Mr. Miyagi got more laughs in the original Karate Kid than his "spoof" counterpart did during this entire train wreck of a movie. Dominique Swain is another big offender here. I'm sure she was directed to completely overact, but she completely blew past the line separating funny from downright annoying. With maybe one or two exceptions, I found her performance almost unbearable.
It's not all doom and gloom, after all I did get through the whole thing without deleting it. I'm not normally a huge Tracy Morgan fan, but he completely stole the show with the brief role he was given. Even by spoof standards Joey Kern might have been a bit too over-the-top as the nemesis, but he did get me to laugh more than once. There were also some laughs to be found in some of the dancing scenes and the lead actor looked eerily like C.Thomas Howell from "Soul Man" when in black-face.
I guess it's not a complete waste of 100 minutes, but it's not hard to realize why this script wound up as 'made for VH1' filler either. I have a sneaking suspicion that this was shot for theatrical release or possibly direct-to-DVD. The transfer is clearly cropped from some widescreen film format. It's pretty easy to see why it never made it that far. (Altho from what I hear, this is being released on DVD. Oh boy.) Anyways, this one misses far more than it hits. When you are constantly reminded how much superior the original 80's movies are instead of being inspired to laugh at their silliness, the makers of the spoof have dropped the ball.
Who thought the movie "Soul Man" was a good idea? Apparently the same folks that thought "Totally Awesome" was a good idea.
