By Clint Morris

I’d say it’s been about twenty years since pretty chicks, boppy tunes and drug references were what I considered vital ingredients of a successful movie – in fact, it was around the same time I started to loss respect for films that were essentially xeroxes of another (“Mission in Action” and “Rambo : First Blood Part II” not withstanding) too. It probably goes without saying that the new “Dazed and Confused” rip-off “Remember the Daze”, which is essentially an hour-and-a-half of pretty girls chugging beer and smooching bad boys, didn’t chalk up more of an appreciation in the Clint abode.

I like pot jokes and perky-breasted teenage girls as much as anyone does, but when a filmmaker blatantly rips off another movie – as is the case here – it just irks me. There’s a smidgen of originality here – um, Rory Cochrane isn’t part of the cast, and, um, er, it’s set in the 90s not the 70s – but for the most part director Jess Manafort has taken the guts of Rich Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” and plonked a different – though similarly-sounding – title on it.

Featuring some of Young Hollywood’s latest residents – Chris Marquette (“The Girl Next Door”), Amber Heard (“Never Back Down”), Alexa Vega (“Spy Kids”) and “Gossip Girl” starlet Leighton Meester – “Daze” centers on a group of school students who are about to say goodbye to highschool. It’s all set over 24-hours where the youngsters fall in love, smoke weed, sell drugs, smooch the seemingly unsmoochable, take bubble bath’s together (oh the possibilities!) and, er, smoke weed (did I mention that already?).

Though the cast do a good enough job, and the storyline’s interesting enough, the fact that it has all been seen before (and the matter of the tone of the film shifting constantly between believability and unbelievability), and done better, makes “Remember the Daze” no more than something adequate to watch between commercial breaks.

DVD EXTRAS
Extras include a reasonably insightful 11-minute behind-the-scenes making-of.