“The ’90s are history. So am I.”

Justin’s rating: If only The Breakfast Club knew how often it would be homaged

Justin’s review: Sometimes you know within the first five minutes that you’re going to absolutely love a movie.

For me, Detention took three.

If Scream was meta and Scream 4 was meta stuffed inside of meta, then Detention is a recurring mobius loop of self-aware ironic meta quirkiness. Good luck trying to find your footing in the first half, because just when you think you understand what this flick is trying to do, it jukes wildly and upsets your expectations.

Basically, this is a slasher movie that doesn’t take itself or the subject seriously yet it doesn’t want to go the extra two steps to becoming an out-and-out parody. Characters talk to the camera, the playful subtitles are practically a main cast member, phones and online technology are adored a little too much, and Dane Cook is the principal of the local high school.*

To put it another way: Think of Detention as the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World of teen slasher flicks. This was a very, very short-lived era for nerdy ADHD movies, but we did get them.

So there’s this copycat killer modeled after an in-universe horror film called Cinderhella who’s up to No Good at Grizzly River High. Narrowing down the suspects to a group of notable students who happen to have top billing, Principal Dane Cook locks them all in detention together, figuring that the situation will resolve itself somehow.

It makes things worse and could possibly end the town as they know it.

To add another layer of peculiarity to Detention, each of these students is based off a different famous teen protagonist smooshed into the same flick. Riley is basically MTV’s Daria, Clapton is Ferris Bueller, Toshiba is Data from Goonies, Ione has Freaky Friday body-swapped with her mother, Sander is every John Hughes nerd, Billy is going through the plot of The Fly, Gord is secretly a Faculty-like alien, and Elliot is Donnie Darko trying to stave off the apocalypse via infinite time loop.

Also, there’s a time-traveling machine inside of a giant bear mascot who originally came from Planet Starclaw.

Have I mentioned how much I totally, utterly, completely love this movie? This is the most insane setup I’ve ever seen, and I was totally there for it.

Riley, our main character, is depressed and in the midst of the “worst day of her life” as she hobbles around on a walking cast (which everyone mocks) and finds her vegetarian feminist principles degrading by the second. But when she gets swept up into a fight against an unknown enemy and finds herself traveling back to 1992 to fix the future, Riley steps up to the moment and does what any Gen X-in-spirit would do: complain about it, dress up as Claire Danes, and then get it done.

We’re in for a collision course every teen movie from 1984 to 2004, but instead of becoming Not Another Teen Movie, Detention finds its outlet in playing the absurdity straight… thus making it even more absurd. We get a 90-minute whirlwind tour around the chaos of teenage life, with or without serial killers in the mix. And as director Joseph Khan (Torque) is mainly a music video director, the look of this film is super-stylized from start to finish.

Eventually, for those of us completely lost at home, Detention gives us little side stories that explain each character’s unusual situation. Although those explanations usually raise more questions than answer anything, so good luck with that. Also, the identity and motive of the killer is probably the weakest spot here, a big shoulder-shrug of “who cares?”

The question of what the director is trying to say with this mish-mash of horror and teen tropes feels like it’s crucial to Detention being anything other than a pop culture greatest hits. What I got out of it, at least, was the idea of “authenticity.” Can we — can movie characters — be authentic and genuine in a post-modern nostalgia-laden super-meta age? This movie can’t land that argument, but it is hopeful that something real exists under all of this chaotic nuttiness.**

There aren’t so much downsides of Detention as caveats. First, this is a nonstop frantic movie that is a little too much on the hyper side, and that means you’re going to miss stuff and get a lot of mental whiplash from scenes going all over the place. Second, as previously implied, Detention never picks a genre or even story lane and sticks with it. And third, you’ve got to like absurdist comedy to get the most out of this.

Finally, despite there being a killer and this being, nominally, a slasher flick, Detention is way too concerned with being odd and goofy than it is scary. If frights are your thing, you’re not going to get them here.

But if you’re down for manic insanity, pop culture overload, and loads of laughs, Detention might be the best, most craziest thing you’ll see all year.

*Do you remember the time back when Dane Cook used to be our worst enemy, apart from hipsters? Pepperidge Farm remembers!

**In a sense, it’s carrying on the same conversation that 1991’s Popcorn and There’s Nothing Out There started.

Intermission!

• Hoobastank? “What! They’re good!”
• Rock posters sometimes talk to you
• HERPEXX
• Cinderhella II: Beauty Scream
• OK I laughed at Taylor closing the closet door on the cat’s head
• Don’t fall asleep in bed eating ketchup and fries (and nice fakeout with the “bloody” hand)
• THE MOVIE DETENTION IS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING EVEN IF YOU’RE SUICIDAL
• The Prince Humperdink Award
• “You’re robbing me? I didn’t even know Iceland had crime!”
• Riley: 0 Hipsters: 1
• If a girl slips and falls in the hallway between classes, it is absolutely appropriate to use her as a ramp for skateboarding
• All of the ways that they incorporate the cast into props
• “Did falling off the ugly train knock a dream into her head?”
• All of the characters’ names scrawled on the wall of the girls’ bathroom
• Magnetic bear
• “Pregnant teenagers are never funny.”
• Flux capacitor and 1.21 jiggawatts reference on the science teacher’s whiteboard
• Name-dropping Torque, the director’s previous flick
• “Hey Riley, I don’t want to hear about your testicles.”
• The bear claw’s been wired with highly advanced… magnets
• “Well, Clapton. I’m wet.”
• Clapton’s amazing ’80s sunglasses
• “I make 40 Gs a year plus dental. You may not have a Skittle.”
• Perfect Strangers actor name drop (and subtitles)
• Riley as the bear mascot had me rolling on the ground
• C+C Music Factory “Everybody Dance Now” (and cassettes? In 2011?)
• Road House!
• “Ione is an old soul trapped in a cheerleader’s body.” Truth.
• “What if that innocent cow was YOUR SON?”
• “Americans want chickens to DIE!”
• It’s best to eat baby animals
• The running gag of Riley’s travails with her walking cast
• “Do not become the bad guy in the health class pregnancy scare video!”
• OK that might be the second-funniest hanging scene after James Franco
• Nobody in this school seems that concerned about murder and/or suicide
• “Clapton, you’re my Ralph Macchio, do that crane thing!”
• The frustration of the bully not being allowed to beat up his victim
• All of the alien invasion foreshadowing
• Playgrounds are frustrating obstacles for both hunter and hunted
• Riley mentioning “1996” and then the cop name-dropping Scream
• Skateboarding date
• “Eat my shorts, jerk!”
• “This is the best movie since Volcano!“
• Movie theaters are the best place to hold an impromptu debate
• “I have fly blood in my veins.”
• Exploding dog and TV hand
• The Claire Danes costume
• Red shirt is not a good omen
• The slasher getting absolutely trashed by Billy for a bit there
• An arm falling on a grill is enough to make one a vegetarian again
• “There’s always a new way of looking at each other.”
• PLANET STARCLAW
• “I’ve had a detention every day for the last 19 years.” Nothing like introducing a major character 54 minutes into a movie
• Elliott’s time montage was the most expensive of the film due to music licensing rights for each period
• The giant CRT monitors in 1992’s library
• Sloan in 1992 trying to get a wifi connection on her cellphone
• How did Ione’s cellphone get to 1992 if they swapped minds?
• Ooh, free tix to Lethal Weapon 3!
• Freejack on laserdisc!
• “The killer is right. Here.” And the black guy speed-walks off stage left
• Cinderhella III: Blood Bowl watches Slashing Beauty 4 watches Beauty Beast 5
• “The end of the world is coming in 1992.”
• The background reaction of the girl accidentally pulling off the lower half of the murder victim
• Time travel bear is like Iron Man on the inside
• “I’m never leaving this place” is a normal reaction to finding oneself in 1992
• Clapton got an A
• “Here, I made you a mix tape.”
• “Ione’s giving birth to herself?” “I missed that class.”
• That’s the saddest I’ve ever seen someone ask someone else to prom
• Riley’s shoe’s been waiting for her since 1992!
• The Dirty Dancing dance!
• The Breakfast Club ending speech!