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What do you call a movie with all the right ingredients to make a good comedy yet fails miserably? Senior Skip Day.

The plot is simple enough: a group of seniors cut class all day in order to party, all the while dodging their principal who is intent on ruining the fun. The formula provides for gags aplenty, as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off proved some twenty two years ago. The writers seem to be aware that they shamelessly pillage the 80’s comedy classic. One of the first scenes in the movie makes reference to Ferris’s faking sick skills. Senior Skip Day however, watches like it was written by a horny thirteen year old who is mildly retarded.

Further pillaging the classic, the main character (who I don’t think anyone would buy as a high school student) delivers monologues to the camera about his crappy nerd life, his undying love for the popular girl and other things no one gives a shit about.

We are, rather obligatorily, introduced to the school cliques. There is no new material here, though it is an excellent example of how the movie behaves as if it is pushing the edges of comedy, but isn’t. For example, take the vegetarian and animal rights activist (who looks and acts as if she desperately wants to be Allison Hannigan, cute, compact and red-headed); though she berates everyone for eating meat, she wears leather. Later in the movie she gets high and eats a bucketful of fried chicken, all the while making out with a classmate who has repeatedly mocked her throughout the film. It’s close to being funny, but just not edgy or fresh enough to do the trick.

As if to prove that it relies on gimmicks to bring in an audience, Senior Skip Day flaunts its unrated status, but the nudity is sad and rare. The F-Bomb is tossed around, just for the sake of cursing, and of course, there are heaps of drug usage.

The cast, with one exception, are a group of undwhelming unknowns or has-beens. The main character, Adam, had a bit part in Donnie Darko.  Scott is played by Talan Torriero, recognizable from Laguna Beach. Tara Reid shows us why she doesn’t have a career any longer, and the female lead, Kayla Ewell, is just plain unlikable. The ever talented Larry Miller can’t even pull off a good performance, despite his face plant into a bag of cocaine that Mary Kate Olsen would be proud of. The only person of interest in the entire movie is Clint Howard, who manages not to let the overwhelming stench of the film touch him.

As far as extras go, there are some utterly uninteresting trailers, and that is it. This movie is so God-awful that the people who made the DVD must have realized the futility of trying to jazz it up with extras.

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