You’d think the boy band phenomenon would be an easy thing to make fun of.  The whole concept of groups like N*Sync and The Backstreet Boys is so silly in the first place—how can a pre-programmed, carefully processed group of pretty boys who don’t do anything but dance around, sing unremarkable, controversy-free ballads take themselves so seriously?  And yet, when MTV tried to make fun of the movement with their first original movie, 2gether, they ended up accidentally creating yet another useless pop group.  Of course, this just may be another symptom of the leper-like disease “MTVitis,” in which everything that MTV touches instantly turns to shit.

    Boy Wonderz seems like it was originally intended to be a satire of boy bands, as evinced by its’ production title, the Spinal Tap-inspired This is the Disk-O-Boyz.  Unfortunately, it seems that something went wrong early on in the production and the filmmakers decided to eliminate almost all the humor and shoot it as a straight feature, rather than a faux documentary.

    The film begins during the height of the five-member Disk-O-Boyz’ fame (We’re never given an explanation as to how they formed), when they perform their hit single “Panties” to a bunch of screaming girls.  The flick then follows the evolution of the group from descent into limbo and back up to the top of the charts.  Each member gets their own sub-plot (two of them are adopted and encounter a birth mother adoption mix-up, one is gay, comes out and launches a solo career, another is a virgin and ends up getting married) and their manager tries to control the conflicts of attitude.

    The problem here is the total waste of potential.  The first few moments feature some awkward self-parody (including an appearance on the—get ready to laugh yourself silly—“Susie O’Connell Show.”  Ha.  Ha-ha.  Nnngh.), director Sim quickly gives up on trying to make this funny at all. Instead, he throws in horrifically lame dramatic sequences featuring sixth-rate Good Will Hunting psychoanalysis (“Everyone needs to be loved, Kenny, even you, but being loved means getting hurt,” I mean, Christ!) and plays the rest of the movie perfectly straight.  Of course, the beauty of flicks like This is Spinal Tap, The Rutles and Fear of a Black Hat is their deadpan style and straight face, but Boy Wonderz doesn’t have the exaggerated drama stretched to comic proportions that makes those films so great.

    Not content to simply fail as a comedy, Boy Wonderz makes great strides to fail as a drama as well; The course of events make no sense, the time frame is off (Is this supposed to be taking place over one year, several years, or what?  And are these twentysomething actors really supposed to be playing 17-year-olds?), and the film’s occasional lame attempts at “humor” (their dance instructor’s inexplicable tutu-wearing) just serve to confuse matters.  Hell, the fact that nobody thought to put a back-page ad on their phony magazines is just a sign that nobody really gave a shit.

    I’m really puzzled as to how and why Boy Wonderz got made.  As a Spinal Tap-like play on boy bands, it has all the satirical edge of a Neil Diamond concert.  As a drama about the tough job it is to be in a boy band, Wonderz sports nothing more than blandly-directed, poorly-written clichés that look positively whitewashed next to a “Behind the Music” episode featuring Menudo.  Maybe this is meant for really easily amused teenage girls (the guys are attractive, and I guess it teaches valuable lessons about life or something), but the fact that there’s more bite in any given five minutes of the recent Josie and the Pussycats than all of Boy Wonderz just underlines its’ utter pointlessness.

    The DVD isn’t letterboxed, and is the usual featureless (and even more irritating, menuless) entry in the “Blockbuster Exclusives” line that don’t seem to understand much of the purpose behind the new technology.  At least this one allows you to do a chapter skip past the trailers and go straight to the feature.  A shame that feature is Boy Wonderz.

    I might have even excused the fact that the title ends in a "Z" had it been done with some irony.

    An