So Undercover (2012)
College...it's the most dangerous assignment of them all.
Look, I promise I’ll stop referencing my recently published piece in this month’s issue of The Drunken Canal (available free at the newspaper box on Canal and Essex in NYC), but today’s feature goes right along with what I wrote about. In my piece, I describe how college is the ultimate time for personal style reinvention. My ultimate argument is that you should wear Halloween costumes every day so you can constantly reinvent yourself and that’s not so much what happens in today’s feature, but it does feature college students inventing a new self to cover up embarrassing pasts or current identities and sell themselves as someone wholly different. Obviously, that could be any college movie, but this one also involves espionage, organized crime, Zapp’s potato chips and Mike O’Malley. So what the hell am I talking about today? Why none other than box office bomb So Undercover (2012) starring Miley Cyrus, Mike O’Malley, and Jeremy Piven, who is no stranger to box office bomb college movies (PCU I’m looking at you, and also someone PLEASE get PCU on streaming, my DVD copy is scratched and you can’t even rent it).
So Undercover was directed by Tom Vaughan, best known for What Happens in Vegas, so you know going into this one it’s gonna be a doozy. The film centers around a college aged girl named Molly (Miley Cyrus) who goes undercover as a girl named Brooke. Molly works with her father (Mike O’Malley), a disgraced former FBI agent who is a gambling addict in big debt, as a PI that gathers evidence of infidelity for hire. She is recruited by FBI agent Armon Ranford (Jeremy Piven) to go (so) undercover at a Louisiana university and watch over Alex Patrone (Lauren McKnight), the daughter of a senator who is due to testify against an organized crime faction, and whom Ranford insists is in danger of attack or kidnapping at the university. Molly is to go undercover as Brooke, one of Alex’s fellow sorority sisters, and figure out which characters at the university are not who they say they are and figure out which one of them is hiding attempts to harm Alex. Yup, that’s our plot. I think. I’m honestly still confused about everything and I’ve seen this movie twice now. But when have I ever let plot confusion get in the way of having some fun watching a movie? Let’s crack into it.
The movie begins with Molly essentially being Spiderman as she trails a cheating husband to a hotel suite where he is involved in a threesome. She doesn’t seem to be a good PI since she talks to the people she should be watching in the elevator, revealing her presence. She scales the hotel to break into his room and get photographic evidence, even though hotel windows can’t open further than like two inches so I don’t know how she managed this one. She is seen by the cheating husband and he chases her to the roof with a flogging rod. Kinky! She manages to outsmart the guy and shows off her quick thinking and ability to spring into action aggressively. Also, Mike O’Malley plays Mike O’Malley so well here.
Molly finds herself at a truck stop on an assignment and she is just like sitting there obviously taking pictures of a man getting handsy with a waitress and then leaving with her. The guy must be extremely focused on bedding the waitress as he does not notice the young lady clearly taking pictures of him in a small eatery. It takes none other than Ranford to point this out to the man, who leaves without the waitress, thus freeing Molly from her assignment. Ranford explains that he is an FBI agent who wants to recruit her to go (so) undercover and spy on a senator’s daughter Alex at her sorority. He explains the senator is due to testify about an organized criminal from the country Georgia and that there are people laying low in disguise around the university trying to harm Alex to keep her father silent. Ranford explains that Molly is needed because she looks like a sorority girl, and Molly is all “I couldn’t pull that off” even though she looks just like a sorority girl, just in a leather jacket or whatever. She takes the assignment upon learning how large her father’s gambling debt is, hoping to clear it.
We cut to a ridiculously too long makeover scene in which they literally just comb her hair and put her in a dress yet they act like they are curing tuberculosis. What an impossible task, making a pretty girl look like a pretty girl but wearing pink! The grooming montage is chock full of terrible one liners, including a bad eating disorder joke and one about how girls named like “Cotton” and “Hunter” in the sorority were conceived in an L.L.Bean (please sponsor me) outlet store. They give her the name Brooke Stonebridge, which Molly says is the name of a gated community not a human name, which okay I guess that’s a joke. There’s still 75 minutes of this movie left at this point, and that’s no joke.
When Molly arrives (I’m going to call her Brooke from now on because that’s who she’s portraying), there’s classic fish out of water contrast jokes happening, as though they think making the makeover montage extra long will suspend our disbelief that Brooke would have any trouble blending in with these girls. She meets sister Stella who claims to have been a model in Croatia I think. She meets her roommate, Kelly Osbourne for some reason, who was like 30 when this came out, and speaks in her regular British accent yet we learn nothing about the character. She then meets Alex whom she has been assigned to watch over and protect. She lies about going to the same summer camp as Alex hoping to inspire a sense of camaraderie and it’s clear from the jump that Lauren McKnight is possibly the most talented actress in this movie and maybe she should have gotten the starring role instead of Miley. Alex is witty, funny, charming, and confident and Brooke is just like waddling through the movie.
Brooke next meets dreamboat Nicholas (Josh Bowman) who is absolutely mindfucked that a girl knows what kind of motorcycle he rides, even though Triumph motorcycles say the name of the maker right on it. Whoa a GIRL can READ?!? It is at this point I wish that Mike O’Malley was featured more prominently.
The movie tries to make the sorority girls all look dumb to contrast Brooke and Alex and it’s pretty ridiculous. Sorry So Undercover, you are NOT about to undo all the good will TV series Greek has done to uplift the image of sororities! Not on my watch. (Shoutout my Zeta Beta Zetas)
The fish out of water antics continue as the girls are asked what they want most in the world and Brooke’s answer (some very specific gun) is SO crazy compared to one of the other sisters, who’s dream is to be on a reality show so she can go on vacation with Chelsea Handler. Somehow, we’re made to think wanting to go on vacation with Chelsea Handler is the normal desire.
The part we’ve all been waiting for happens at 27:52, where Brooke remarks that she’s “so undercover” and you know I absolutely LOVE when they say the name of the movie in dialogue! Anyway, Brooke continues to act weird and when she answers a question right in class, everyone is really suspicious of her. This movie goes through great effort to get us to believe Brooke is some outsider yet aside from the gun comment and the paranoia over Alex (whom she is there to watch, remember) she is pretty much a normal college girl. They keep doing gags like this and they do not land.
Brooke can’t let Molly get too far from her, though, as she notices another student sneaking around with a married doctor-professor. Her friends think she’s weird but seem slightly impressed at her deduction skills. She keeps saying “amazeballs” which is supposed to make us think she’s a sorority sister. Did the writers have a huge vendetta against sororities? How else does this shit make sense?
Okay, so a bunch more antics happen. There’s a big party scene. Brooke is crushing on Nicholas. She meets with Ranford who insists she keeps up her role and dates Nicholas. She tells Ranford she is suspicious of her sorority sister Sasha as well as Professor Talloway. I absolutely love how we’re supposed to believe the FBI thought she’d be perfect for this job. How did they even find her? Not like she has a Cheaters-type show or anything. There’s a bunch more balls jokes as Brooke tells Nicholas his balls are amazing instead of saying amazeballs, and the sorority has some kind of charity carnival where there’s more ball jokes and they have to sell a bunch of plush crawdaddies for some reason. Brooke is dressed like a crawdaddy and gets called Lady Gaga at the VMAs. Kelly Osbourne works at a kissing booth but refuses to kiss the paying customers. The rival sorority is beating them (at what?) because they are doing a sexually charged carwash, so Brooke blackmails the cheating doctor into buying all the plush crawdaddies in exchange for her silence.
Sasha is upset that Brooke is succeeding and sets her up to be caught as a kleptomaniac in the sorority, giving Brooke a stolen bracelet under false pretenses and stealing a bunch of things from other sisters to plant on Brooke. Brooke is ostracized until she learns Sasha’s secret; that she USED TO BE NERDY OH MY GOD WHAT A SINNER! Sasha comes clean and clears Brooke of the wrongdoing. You’d think this is just a stupid aside but honestly this moment comes back to play a key role in the movie’s resolution so it may be the only well-written thing in here, as there are so many loose plot threads, I went looking for my sewing kit halfway through.
Later we see Alex run off upset telling Brooke that there are “real world problems” bigger than the sorority, and Brooke tails Alex. There are so many side missions in this movie I keep forgetting that its about her watching Alex. We find out from Ranford that Nicholas is using a fake identity too just like Sasha but Brooke can’t be bothered to believe it. Also, I’m not sure the movie ever clears up WHY he is going by an alias but maybe I missed it in both viewings. Sasha keeps saying stuff like “O-M-double-F-G” which is not something I’ve ever heard a human say, especially when you parse it out to “oh my fucking fucking god” like what does that even mean?
When Brooke attempts to trail Alex, Nicholas distracts her and since she is mildly suspicious of his false identity, she takes him to a bedroom, ties him up and punches him in the face before stealing his motorcycle. She rides it to where Alex arrives and a real-life alligator meets her on the porch. Luckily, she stole a bag of Zapp’s potato chips from the party she was at and distracts the gator with them, which is pretty realistic because if I was snapping my jaws at someone and they threw me some Zapp’s chips (HEY ZAPP’S SPONSOR ME PLEASE), I would also let them go unharmed. My biggest complaint is she throws a bag of Cajun Crawtaters at the gator, which I guess is a nod to the crawdaddies theme from earlier, but ZAPP’S MAKES A CHIP CALLED GATOR TATERS! WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU NOT USE GATOR TATERS FOR THIS SCENE?!? THIS IS THE BIGGEST MISSED OPPORTUNITY IN FILM HISTORY.
She breaks in and finds out Professor Talloway, whose house this is I guess, is actually in the FBI. She is then attacked by a masked gunman who escapes. For some reason, she immediately thinks it’s Ranford because I guess the movie ran out of curiosity. She finds Talloway beaten out in the mud and lets him know she’s been sent by the FBI but is actually a PI from Texas. She meets Ranford and threatens to release the senator’s ledgers to FBI if she is followed even though she still doesn’t have the location of them. I’m not sure if she was supposed to locate them, I don’t think they mentioned that. Ranford offers $50K to keep Alex, which is pretty twisted cuz like what’s Brooke supposed to do, just write up a receipt and become a human trafficker?
The actual FBI shows up and are very suspicious of her until she proves she is trying to help them stay one step ahead of Ranford. They instruct her to promise fake ledgers to Ranford and duck to the ground once he touches them so they can arrest him. When the time comes, the sorority sisters are in full force wearing shirts that look like Crush Soda Mousse cans (big shoutout to Canada). She meets with Ranford who uses a signal jammer to ruin the surveillance and admits he’s former FBI himself so he knows the tactics. He pulls a gun on Brooke and forces her to bring him to the ledgers, which sorority sister Cotton (Megan Park) states are in a sorority suite.
Oh, look. Mike O’Malley’s back. I guess he’s surveilling Brooke, but was he doing this the whole time? No idea, and they also don’t really explain Ranford’s motivation either. Like why set her up just to do this? He could have just kidnapped Alex himself. And is he with the mafia? The car with Alex in it is rigged to explode if Brooke tries anything. Nicholas shows up and tries to fight Ranford. Brooke tackles Ranford thru a window and gets his gun because of course she does.
Ranford makes the car explode but Mike O’Malley gets him at gunpoint. Turns out Alex was fine! Cotton was good at a setup but Sasha’s kleptomania pays off (see? It came back!) as she stole the keys from Ranford to get Alex out before the explosion. Alex gives Molly (who admits she’s Molly so we can stop calling her Brooke) a SIM card with the records of her father’s involvement to give to the FBI. The sorority girls seem more necessary to the mission than Molly, yet the FBI immediately wants to keep her around for more missions, but she decides she wants to stay in college and asks for her father to be reinstated in the FBI in exchange for her help, to which they agree. The sorority sisters ask if they’re also now in the FBI and request pink guns which sounds like a way better movie than this was.
We fast forward to Molly spying on Cotton’s new boyfriend and Nicholas approaches her and kisses her and uhhhhh that’s the end. Guess it was never important why Nicholas used a fake name.
So that’s our movie. This one is like watching a migraine slowly envelop your brain. It’s sitting pretty at an impressive 6% on Rotten Tomatoes (HOW is this 1% better than College I ask?) so you can get a good idea of what you’re in for. It is currently streaming for free on a bunch of platforms, including Tubi, Vudu and Youtube. Honestly this is one of those ones where you see the cast and think “wow, these people together in a movie with THIS premise?!?” and kind of have to watch it to believe it’s real. It’s definitely real, but there’s not much you can take from this one. It’s pretty terrible, but if you need a good excuse to be confused while Mike O’Malley is on screen, this is the film for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.