Bovie Movie

Six friends reunite after 20 years at a mutual childhood friend’s funeral. A search through their deceased friend’s house reveals a map to a trunk. The map spurs the friends to find it and dig it up. After uncovering the trunk, the unexpected is found … the rotted remains of a child. A child from a past they’ve long forgotten, a child that begins to haunt their every waking moment and makes them question who they really are. The closer they come to remembering the circumstances of the mysterious child’s death, the closer they come to their own reckoning.

Hawk-like Marine Corps officer Benson Payne (Damon Wayans) attempts to whip into shape the usual assortment of misfit JROTC kids in this minor remake of The Private War of Major Benson. Of course, both the major and his pint-sized recruits have something to teach one another. Payne teaches them the value of self-discipline and instills self-confidence in them, and the recruits teach him to stop and smell the roses (not to mention the fact that kids sometimes need coddling rather than screaming). And, of course, there is the annual JROTC statewide competition, which the kids are obligated to win before the movie can end. While there are some funny moments (the major’s exhibition in full-dress whites at a school dance, for example), the script seems too color-by-numbers to be interesting to anyone other than undiscriminating younger viewers.