Three young petty delinquents Julie (Claire Danes), Pete (Giovanni Ribisi), and Linc (Omar Epps) are recruited by detective Greer (Dennis Farina) to work undercover where cops can't normally go. They are sent in to a club to investigate. When they find Greer murdered, they set off to find his murderer even though they are ostracized by most of the police. Meanwhile Billy (Josh Brolin) from the club is interested in Julie.The lighting is way too dark for most of the movie. I understand the underground sensibility of their investigation. However it makes it hard to watch. Ribisi is good playing the jokey jittery guy. Epps is way too stiff of an actor. Danes is probably miscast here. I've never seen the TV show, and the movie is probably trying to copy Peggy Lipton. It seems better if they go more white trash for the role like a Juliette Lewis kind. Dane is way too nice and sweet. I don't know what the original TV show is like. So it's hard for me to compare and judge the movie. There is some good music but by itself, the movie is kind of boring.

I'm not sure why this has the reputation it does, beyond the fact that it's one more needless remake, and this one wound up starring several people who never graduated to full-on movie stardom. Otherwise, it's no better or worse than most routine remakes of old movies or TV series in recent years. The relative cool (at the time) of the original TV series--which cast ostensible hippies as offenders-turned-undercover-cops--is hard to reproduce, as since then we've had "21 Jump Street" and so forth. Plus the line between "straight" and "alternative" culture is much less distinct than it was back then. But in any case, this movie hardly tries--it just uses the name as an excuse for a routine action movie about hot young ex-perp cops. Supposedly hot, at least. Danes seems like a junior legal secretary, Ribisi acts like a spaz, and Epps is OK but charisma-free. Actually they're all OK, under the circumstances, but none are particularly convincing--just good actors miscast as action heroes. Still, there's nothing particularly obnoxious about this misfire, the way there is about, say, your average Michael Bay joint. It's just mediocre. The packaging is perfectly competent if uninspired. The director's only prior feature was an excellent indie drama, "Johns," and it's really too bad that this flop mainstream crossover seems to have basically killed his career. (He did have a hand in the screenplays for later successes "8 Mile" and "The Fighter.") Actually the brief dramatic aspects here--Ribisi's disillusionment with his parents, Danes with her lying beau-- are decently handled. It's more the action/adventure/comedy angles that fail to levitate, though despite a few silly moments they're not particularly bad. (The funniest moment is a complete non sequitur when Ribisi shows up on the beach with take-out coffee and his recipients have no idea why he got it. Believe me, it's better in context.) Why do certain mainstream movies bomb and get labelled as serious duds, while others that are at least as bad (and/or as financially unsuccessful) get labelled as disasters? It's not always explicable. "The Mod Squad" isn't a particularly good movie. But it's not a particularly bad one, either. Actually it's kinda enjoyable, at least on the level of the routine TV action- series episodes it was inspired by (and which its musical score conspicuously imitates). It's just another so-so would-be franchise-launching film that got branded a dud cuz it landed like one. Maybe it would have been a better idea to parody the source the outdated material, as the big-screen "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky & Hutch" (or "21 Jump St.") did.

The movie was slow, the dialogue between actors/actresses felt "flat" and basically there was no development of the characters in the story.Omar Epps skulks around with a mad look on his face the entire time, pouting and basically looking annoyed with everybody. Danes has no on-screen magic, and Ribisi's character is a goober that nobody would want to hang out with even if they were paid to do so.Throw in the weird scene where Epps has to dance with an old man, and you have what quite possibly COULD BE the worst movie in cinema history.I watched it on satellite (thank goodness I didn't pay for it), and wished I hadn't.Do yourself a favor and go sort your underwear and socks drawer if you need something to do but are tempted to watch this movie when/if it comes on your TV. Awful movie if you ask me, and I generally have something good to say about just about any movie out there.

This may just be the worst movie of all time. Never have I seen such horrible film making before in my life. Its so bad I think I want to go watch Barney instead. I advise everyone who reads this to write a petition to get this movie off of our film history so we can never hear from it again. I give it 1 out of 10.