‘2Gether’ Misses Mark By Long Way

I have seen my share of bad movies but few, if any, prepared me for the utter, complete, sometimes cringe-inducing mess that is “2gether,” MTV’s parody of the boy-band phenomenon, which airs tonight at 8 p.m. on MTV.

And what is so disappointing is that the idea and the timing are so right. The Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync have sold, between them, more than 20 million CDs in less than two years, almost exclusively to little girls who love their fresh-scrubbed good looks and endless stream of bland, first-makeout-session-friendly, faux-soulful tunes about the vagaries of teen romance.

Point being, the current crop of cutie-pie boy bands is ripe for the picking.

Unfortunately “2gether” can’t decide whether it wants to be sweet or nasty and mainly chooses the former, dumbing down its subject matter and undercutting whatever glib knowingness (which is to say, value as a parody) it might have had as a result. Dick and the Gunn brothers want to make us laugh at boy bands, but they refuse to go in for the kill (or to get a lot of details right) and end up oozing as much vanilla as the wussy music they’re trying to thumb their collective nose at.

The dialogue is dreadful, and the acting more so. Only Alex Solowitz as the Kid Rockish “rebel” Mickey Parke seems to really commit himself to his role.

The film does have one might-have-been-redeeming quality: the music itsel, including songs such as “Say It (Don’t Spray It)” and 2gether’s big hit “U Me Us (Calculus).” Both are just about perfect in their cookie-cutter blandness.