I have to confess being put off by James Franco's previous performances. He always looks like he's laughing at a private joke at my expense. So it's unfortunate that despite his attempts to portray a less smug, more determined character in Annapolis, an avalance of cliches overload the film's story and script. 

Franco plays Jake Huard, a working-class kid whose dream has always been to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Jake gets his wish when, after weeks of pestering, his application is accepted, and off he goes for training to be an officer on the kind of ships he had built with his dad. Life as a "plebe" is as wracking as Jake expected, his life divided among performing drills, taking on obstacle courses, flirting with his gorgeous drill instructor (Jordana Brewster), and butting heads with his commanding officer, Midshipman Lt. Cole (Tyrese Gibson). Cole's tough methods are also hard on many of Jake's fellow applicants, turning the two into fast enemies as our hero witnesses his comrades drift away after not meeting Cole's perfect standards. Thus, Jake focuses not only on proving his worth as a potential officer but also on training to confront Cole at the Brigades, a boxing tournament where skill, not rank, is the only thing that matters.

I was expecting Annapolis to be an insider's look at the process of training to be a naval officer by concentrating on the mental and physical obstacles a cadet must overcome to achieve his goal. Instead, Annapolis assembles just about every cliche ever included in an Army movie and merely moves them to a different division of the military. In the end, Stripes ends up being a more compelling look into the process of joining the military (come to think of it, this stiff-moving film could have used a couple of mud-wrestling scenes itself).

There's little originality or suspense in this story, as the most unpredictable aspect of the movie is the order in which the elements we've seen done a gazillion times over are presented. We have the Troubled Kid who has Something to Prove to his Disapproving Dad; the Pretty Girl the Troubled Kid tries to romance, only to discover that -- gasp! -- she's one of his superiors; the Stern Superior who rides the Troubled Kid hard because he Reminds Him of Himself; and the Final Confrontation in which the rivalry brewing between the Troubled Kid and the Stern Superior comes to a fever pitch.

Although the performances here aren't the greatest the cast members have delivered in their careers, that's more the fault of the intensely by-the-numbers script than it is their own. Franco's role involves scowling a lot, Tyrese is there to remind viewers how pale drill sergeants have become since R. Lee Ermey peaked with the character in Full Metal Jacket, and Brewster's function is to make us wonder how someone so young could achieve her character's rank (although, to Brewster's credit, she's a lot more believable than Tara Reid as an anthropologist in last year's Alone in the Dark).

It's not that Annapolis was a lost cause from the beginning, it's just that all of its potential is ruined in favor of taking a  simplistic route. The more absorbing story involving Jake's fight to prove himself worthy to the academy's skeptics is abandoned for the sake of boiling the plot down to -- a boxing movie?! In this aspect, the film is so far removed from the emotional intensity of Million Dollar Baby that it might as well be called Ten Dollar and Thirty-Three Cents Baby.

Budding filmmaker Justin Linn (Better Luck Tomorrow) captures everything with a crisp, clean look so good I was almost willing to forgive the film's shortcomings. Annapolis isn't a completely bad movie by any means, but the story is too by-the-books and its characters are too predictable. I predict this DVD will soon disappear into Wal-Mart's bargain bin containing hundreds of military films as cliched as   Annapolis itself.

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and rated “PG-13” for some violence, sexual content and language. Bonus material not rated.)