Jett Jackson: The Movie

I have been made aware that there is a list circulating on Buzzfeed that ranks the "top" 25 Disney Channel original movies. I fancy myself something of a connoisseur of awful (but underrated) kids' movies, so I will take it upon myself to evaluate these rankings, and identify which movies are Underrated, which are Overrated, and which I didn't see.

Number 25 on the list is Rip Girls, a lame surfing movie that I don't recall apart from the title. I will skip it and move on to...

JETT JACKSON: THE MOVIE
Shawn Levy, 2001
Buzzfeed article ranking: 24 out of 25

This movie, starring the recently deceased Lee Thompson Young, was a spin-off of the television series The Famous Jett Jackson. Jett was the star of a popular TV show called "Silverstone," where he played a teen-aged secret agent. Jett misses his hometown of Wilsted, North Carolina, so he convinces the network to move production from Hollywood to this fictional East Coast location.

Now, "Wilsted" sounds similar to Wilmington, which is home to a great deal of movie and television production in real life. (Such hits as Dawson's Creek and Iron Man 3 were produced there.) Don't be confused by this similarity—Wilsted is depicted as a small, Andy Griffith style town with no history of television production. Also, the show was actually shot in Toronto.

This was an unremarkable but enjoyable show. Episodes featured such familiar high school intrigues as: Saving your parents' general store by introducing them to the concept of a website; Playing charity golf against an obnoxious movie star named Beauregarde; Campaigning to stop Fahrenheit 451 from being banned by local ordinance; and Learning secrets of your town's history from a ghost. At any rate, the show was much better than its contemporary The Jersey, the series about children who quantum-leap into professional athletes with the help of a magic jersey.

The movie, on the other hand, went way off the deep end. In it, a stoner prop master accidentally builds a device that warps the fabric of spacetime, causing Jett Jackson to enter the world of his fictional alter-ego. (Does that mean it would also have been possible for Jett to travel to other popular TV shows? Could he have switched lives with the Fonz? Or does the fabric of spacetime only allow you to switch places with characters you yourself have played?)

There is a tendency, when TV shows get movie spin-offs, for the movie to be much more fantastic and action-packed than the series ever was. (Let's not forget when Hey Arnold saved the city from corrupt real estate moguls, or when Doug discovered a lost dinosaur.) But somehow this one seems especially cockamamie. In part, this is because the movie is so humorless—it was based on a comedy series, after all. Apparently the same thing happened with The Suite Life of Zack and Cody on Deck, where the movie involved a deadly cloning experiment or something. (I honestly didn't see that one, if you can believe it.)

Anyway, this isn't that bad, but I can't say I blame them for ranking it as low as they did.