Some Kind of Rubbish
So the pitch is that VH1 stumbled upon a movie which was made back in 1986 but due to the production company going bankrupt went undiscovered for 20 years. The reality is "Totally Awesome" is a spoof of 80s movies, picking storylines and ideas from "Footloose", "Teenwolf", "Karate kid", "Some Kind of Wonderful" and many more, too many to mention. Now on paper that might have sounded like a good idea because who doesn't have a favourite 80s movie or at least recognize characters and ideas from the likes of "Dirty Dancing" and "The Breakfast Club". But in practice it fails and is some of the unfunniest 90 minutes I have stumbled across which might explain why when ever I saw this appear on the TV schedule it was always in the slot around midnight when those drunk roll in and might find it amusing.
Having left Pittsburgh the Gunderson family reach their new home in California much to eldest son Charlie's (Mikey Day) dismay. As one of the uncool kids at the new school he decides he is going to win the affections of school princess Kimberly (Brittany Daniel) from her boyfriend, school bully Kipp (Joey Kern). But with Kipp and his guys keep on beating him up he asks Japanese gardener Mr. Yamagashi (James Hong) to teach him how to pole vault. Meanwhile Charlie's sister Lori (Dominique Swain) learns to her horror that dancing is banned in their new town and is forced to join a secret dance group lead by janitor Gabriel (Kattan).
There isn't really a lot else to say about it as all we get is this cobbled together storyline built on elements from recognizable 80s movies with spoofed characters. In fairness the movies they picked were at least the right ones as the likes of "Dirty Dancing" and "Footloose" were some of the most recognizable. But none of the spoofing is funny with people doing crap dances with bad hair or being picked on for having greasy skin is amusing.
It also doesn't help matters that the cast is full of people you probably have never heard of let alone seen. Yes the names Brittany Daniel, James Hong and Tracy Morgan are recognizable but most of the cast are up anonymous playing anonymous characters.
What this all boils down to is that "Totally Awesome" is anything but totally awesome and another spoof movie which just fails to discover the comedy.
