Main cast: Colin Ford (Reagan Collins), Timothy Simons (Detective Cliff Dawkins), Ellie Bamber (Mary Alice Walker), Christine Ko (Amy), Chris Warren (James), Nicholas Cutro (Sam Pickett), Arianna Ortiz (Miss Petersen), Paul Iacono (Ben Wallace), Danielle Macdonald (Becky Wallace), Tanner Stine (Kenny Dawkins), Isaac Cheung (Tom Mulnick), Sarah Hay (Sydney Vaughn), Dileep Rao (Ronnie), Miriam Flynn (Mrs Reed), and Arden Myrin (Connie Dawkins)
Director: Jay Lowi
Extracurricular Activities is billed as something you will get when Ferris Bueller is a homicidal sociopath who accepts payment from the filthy rich school mates of his in exchange for him arranging their parents’ deaths. Say that again? I’m sold. Let me boot up this show and… remain disappointed as the credit rolls.
Colin Ford and his fivehead play Reagan Collins, our Ferris Bueller-like character who is beloved by his parents and teachers because he deliberately conforms to their standards of what a perfect teen should be. Sometimes his veneer cracks, and he will say something resentful, but he catches himself quickly and the adults see what they want to see, so yes, he’s absolutely perfect in their eyes. Perhaps taking payment to murder the parents of his school mates is his way of letting off steam. Only Detective Cliff Dawkins is on to him, but the problem is, nobody believes him one bit.
Oh boy, where do I even start? This one is billed as a dark comedy, but it’s a safe kind, as the parents that get murdered here are portrayed as general assholes and douchebags. Despite wanting to be seen as edgy and daring, this movie never dares to portray its protagonist in a way that may lead viewers to consider him a bad guy even a bit.
Most damning, though, is the main character itself. Reagan is smug, cold, and unreadable for the most part, which won’t be a problem if the character had any shred of personality or charisma. Look at Ferris Bueller, for example: that guy is a smug douchebag, but he does undergo a character journey in his movie, and Matthew Broderick plays that guy with a charming kind of bravado that wins me over. Here, though, Reagan is just smug, and the fact that the movie bends over backward to an unrealistic degree to let him win – adults taking the side of a teen over an experienced detective without any hesitation, seriously? – only makes this character more unlikable and difficult to root for. Colin Ford plays his role like he’s fully sedated, which doesn’t help matters.
Also, this movie tries to pass its more illogical plot elements as “comedy”, which only feels lazy, because there is nothing here that is even a little funny. All the characters here are shallow and unlikable, without any hint of charm or quirk to make their vapid nature palatable, and the story feels like a third-rate effort to pull off an edgy version of a teen high school comedy. Skip Extracurricular Activities – go watch something else that works better as a high school comedy, such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
