AmericanStudies: March 12, 2025: Spring Breaking at the Movies: From Justin to Kelly

[With one
son in college and another about to be, Spring Break is a lot more than just a
concept or a professional reality for this AmericanStudier. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of cinematic portrayals of Spring Break, leading up to some
weekend reflections on being a college Dad!]

On what
wasn’t new about the historic beach bomb, and what was.

Full
disclosure: I haven’t seen more than a few clips of From Justin to Kelly (2003),
the movie Wikipedia
notes “is often regarded as one of the worst movies ever made” and that
received a 2005
Razzie for “Worst ‘Musical’ of Our First 25 Years” (their delightful
scare quotes). Thanks to a Twitter recommendation from AJ Schmitz I did
listen to the How
Did This Get Made? episode on the film, which I’m quite sure was
far more enjoyable than the movie would have been. You might nonetheless argue
that I shouldn’t be writing a blog post on a movie I haven’t watched, and I’d
understand that critique (evidence-based analyzer that I try to be)—but life is
too short to spend 81 minutes watching From
Justin to Kelly; and in any case my plan for this post is to analyze not
all the nuances of this text (probably should have used scare quotes of my own
for both of those last couple nouns), but rather to use it to engage a couple
of pop culture contexts.

For one
thing, the Spring Break-set From Justin
to Kelly, featuring the “acting” debuts (couldn’t resist that time) of American Idol’s first season winner and
runner-up Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini (I’m sure I could find a YouTube
clip to hyperlink there, but I like you all too much to do that to you), is
part of a long tradition of sub-par beach films starring teen idol-type actors.
I’m thinking in particular about the many, many films inspired by Sandra
Dee’s 1959 hit movie Gidget; as I
wrote in that post Gidget isn’t
terrible (although I think its popularity was due more to a bunch of beautiful
bodies making surfing look good than any cinematic strengths), but it doesn’t
seem that we can say the same of the majority of the more than 30 “beach
party films” that were greenlit after Gidget’s
success and were released in the five years after 1963’s Beach Party. These films often starred attractive,
popular young stars like Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, and,
like From Justin to Kelly, were more
or less excuses to put those folks on the beach and hope that young audiences
would want to join them there enough to overlook the absence of plots,
compelling characters, or the like. That legacy doesn’t make From Justin to Kelly any better, but it
does make it make a bit more sense.

On the
other hand, Avalon and Funicello may not have been Olivier and Hepburn, but
they were established actors, performers who had appeared in multiple films
before their beach partying days. Guarini and Clarkson were cast in a film
immediately after their time on American
Idol, and because of that time—Clarkson
in particular has noted that she didn’t want to make the film but was
contractually obligated to do so. I’m not someone who believes that reality TV
is an entirely or even consistently negative cultural presence (certain reality TV
presidents notwithstanding), but I think it’s fair to say that the track
record of reality TV stars going on to meaningful success in any other arena
(or even in their own arena—Clarkson is one of only a few music-show
stars to achieve a lasting career in the field) is a mixed
one at best. You might say that even the most talented screen
performers couldn’t have saved From
Justin to Kelly, but I believe the more accurate frame is quite distinct:
that this thoroughly forgettable film would never have been made at all if it
weren’t for the goal of producing a vehicle for these two reality TV
contestants. This is one Spring Break story that should have stayed broken.

Next
Spring Break film tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What
do you think? Other Spring Break films or texts you’d share?