(Congratulations son! Your dick is just big enough for the testosterone-drenched scenes)

Top Gun Without Any Excitement Or Polish

When its own trailer has more exciting scenes, it is clear that a film is dire difficultes. There is no exploding battleship in "Annapolis" as the preview misleads us to believe, it is just a mindnumbing 108 minute recruitment video with which even the US Navy had, apparantly no desire to associate.

With a background as a writer for "Family Guy", Dave Collard, clearly had excellent experience for wrting about the US Naval recruitment - NOT! Research being negligible, the film gives the impression that he sought advice not from ex-naval officers graduating from Annapolis, but from ex-friends of Anna Nicole Smith for the level of accuracy it has achieved.

Why Hollywood has working class heroes always employed at dockyards it is hard to say, but like Cruise in "War of the Worlds", Jake Huard (James Franco) is a quayside worker with a dream - to apear in a movie that's toitally plotless. For it's all just a background to the traditional testosterone-drenched story about the American Way where an average, none-too-bright Joe succeeds against the odds, despite the unexpectied hospitalization of a close friend, loads of petty infighting and falling in love with his instructor.

From the opening shot to the credits, all the very worst of stereotyping floods out. With not an Arab-American in sight and the only Hispanic, Estrada, being a cologne-drenched, lying gino who won't bath, it is no surprise that the only two black Americans are a fat, lazy loser and an institutionalised "company's man" jerk.

As Tyrese Gibson (Cole), struts around, his forehead bulging like a Klingon Battle Commander amongst a cast of no-ones, you sit in your seat begging for at least some twist in the negligible plot, but it moves from A to B with military precision, ignoring any hint of surprise to finish with an ending so lame it never passed muster with any audience in the US, rolling in a pathetic $17million at the box office.

As the end titles roll, one is left with the obvious question - why wasn't director Justin Lin cashied from the studio's roll?

Film Critic:Robert L Thompsett