Move over “88 Minutes”, you just might not be the worst movie to star an Oscar winner. The new teenage angst based comedy, “Harold” is set for a July 11th release date, and it stars none other than the former Oscar Winner Cuba Gooding Jr. It was hard enough to watch this former up and comer blow a blooming career on shameless paychecks such as “Snow Dog” and “Shadowboxer” (seriously dude, putting in a pool? Paying off gambling debts?)
The comedy surrounds a 14-year old high school student, played by the rounded Spencer Breslin, who happens to sport a Larry David-esque Cul-de-Sac who befriends his schools Janitor (Gooding Jr.) To be honest, the situation alone sounds fairly amusing, but does an early bout of male pattern baldness really merit a feature length film (the two minute preview seems to stretch the material beyond the limits of all natural logic).
The project comes from first time writer/director T. Sean Shannon, who previously wrote for Saturday Night live and The Colin Quinn show (that is reason enough to avoid this thing) and the cast has some surprising C-list names like Ally Sheedy, Nikki Blonski, SNL’er Rachel Dratch and Fred Willard. This thing has straight-to-DVD written all over it. Sorry Cuba, we thought “American Gangster” signaled a comeback for you, but less than a year later you are back on the shithorse train to nowhere. We’d say we were disappointed, but we’re not at all surprised.
