Undiscovered: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

The title of this airy, riffy drama from first-time feature director Meiert Avis gets to the film's non-performance at the box office. Avis pushes "Undiscovered" into the high-strung subcategory of model-musician love--always dangerous, treacherous territory--where characters of no substance demand to be taken seriously or else.

Or else what, you ask? Or else they'll have a bad hair day seems to be the answer.

Problem is, you can't take any of this seriously--the film exists in the ether, where the air is thin and the actors can't breathe. Apparently, neither could screenwriter John Galt, whose script is every bit as literate as the content you'd find in, say, a back issue of "Blender" or "Maxim," with just as much eye candy to bolster the thin material.

Too bad this candy is sour.

The movie stars Pell James as Brier, a delicate model-cum-actress who meets-cute on a New York subway with smoky singer-songwriter, Luke Falcon (Steven Strait). It's a brief connection that involves the romantic, spontaneous tossing of a glove (swoon), with their meeting hitting Luke hard in the heart. If he had the chance, he could drink a whole lot of Brier.

Too bad for Luke that he's off to Los Angeles to find himself and his music. Good news for Luke, then, that Brier has something of a religious calling. She decides she'd rather like to act, which her manager (Carrie Fisher, tragic) rightfully is apprehensive about encouraging. Still, it's off to L.A. for Brier--and you'll never guess what happens next. She eventually meets up with Luke, with their tumultuous love affair hanging in the balance more often than not.

Tossed into this mix are skateboarding dogs, plenty of music video montages, and Ashlee Simpson as Ashlee Simpson--sorry, as Clea--who appears to be saying her lines just fine without any technical assistance. Good for her.

Here, she's Brier's friend, an aspiring actress who likes to sing her heart out, so much so that some might long for a hook to tear her away from the mic. To be fair to Simpson, she's not as bad as the rest of the cast, but that's faint praise considering the talent involved. Still, all isn't lost for this young star of music and reality television. Unlike her older sister, Jessica, she won't ever be the Simpson who spent of the summer of 2005 squeezed into a padded pair of Daisy Dukes.

Grade: D-