The New Guy – Awkward but lovable

The New Guy is a hidden gem of the early 2000’s, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.

High school was a bit of a mixed bag for me.

At school, I was often bullied by my classmates. I had a few friends of course, but not enough to dissuade others from giving me shit every day. I wasn’t much of a fighter, so standing up for myself when under attack from multiple people wasn’t easy for me.

Outside of school though I did pretty good for myself. Most of my friends went to Catholic school, so while being at school sucked, I still had a social life on the outside. I also did much better with the girls, I guess that stereotype about Catholic school girls being easy has some truth to it.

I ended up transferring out of my high school in the very beginning of senior year after causing a shit storm when I got caught hooking up with my bully’s girlfriend outside of school (she went to Catholic school and ran in the same circles as me). The resulting conflict caused the school to basically tell my parents “Either you transfer him or we’re expelling him”. It’s honestly enough for a whole post on its own, and maybe I’ll share the story if there’s interest. I ended up transferring to another school, where I’d later get into even more trouble.

Maybe that’s why The New Guy resonated so much with me.

Released in 2002, The New Guy is the story of high schooler Dizzy Gillespie Harrison, an outcast who attempts to turn his life around by going from dork to cool guy (or “bitch to bull”, as they say in the movie).

It’s very easy to dismiss this film as just another generic movie about teenage popularity, and it’s no mystery why it gets horrible reviews. The dialogue is kind of bad, and the main cast aren’t exactly top-tier actors, so the delivery of lines often comes across as awkward and ham-handed. It also came at a time where the age of the teen comedy was beginning to come to a close. Movies like Dude, Where’s My Car? and American Pie had already set the standard for the genre, and by comparison The New Guy was pathetic.

But despite all its flaws, the movie still holds a special place in my memory, and has a few redeeming qualities that allow me to overlook the bad in it.

The movie stars DJ Qualls in the lead role as Dizzy. As I said before, the actors in this movie aren’t top-tier, but I wouldn’t call any of them bad actors either. DJ Qualls rarely if ever has any lead roles in anything, he’s usually more of a supporting actor or someone that only appears a few times for a few scenes. He’s not so much a bad actor as he is limited by his appearance. He’s gangly and dorky, and while that’s probably not good for most roles it actually works to his advantage in The New Guy. DJ’s appearance and mannerisms as dorky Dizzy Harrison were believable, and even when he transforms into cool guy Gil Harris later he still manages to carry the role in a charming yet realistic way. I’d say that DJ’s performance was actually one of the strongest points of the film, and I might not have enjoyed it as much with someone else in the role.

Other cast members include Eddie Griffin as prison inmate Luther, Eliza Dushku as Dizzy’s love interest Danielle, and Jerod Mixon, Parry Shen, and Zooey Deschanel as Dizzy’s friends Kirk, Glen, and Nora respectively. None of these actors were necessarily big stars, Zooey was still relatively unknown at the time (and hadn’t been replaced with a Katy Perry clone yet), so the biggest name in the bunch was probably Eddie Griffin. Dushku was best known for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while Jerod’s biggest role was one of the sons in Me, Myself, and Irene. I don’t know much about Parry, I’ve never seen him in anything else, but it seems like he’s currently a recurring character on General Hospital, so I guess he’s doing okay. Regardless, the supporting cast wasn’t exactly a star-studded ensemble, but they weren’t complete nobodies either, and I think they handled their roles about as well as they could given the script they were handed.

The New Guy also has the craziest assortment of cameos I’ve ever seen in any movie. Gene Simmons of KISS makes an appearance as a preacher in a shopping mall. You have Coolio as a prison guard, and Henry Rollins of Black Flag even makes an appearance as the prison warden in one of my favorite scenes from the whole movie:

Other cameos include Jerry and Charlie O’Connell (Sliders), Vanilla Ice, Jermaine Dupri, Tommy Lee, Tony Hawk, and even David Hasslehoff. Seriously, this movie had a lot of cameos from some pretty notable people at the time.

This is one of the things I loved the most about the movie. It felt like every scene had the most random cameos in the most random places. Henry Rollins hanging out with prisoners doing tattoos, only for Coolio to come tell him he has a phone call while revealing that Rollins is actually the warden sounds like a dream you’d have after taking NyQuil. The cameos were just so insanely random that they were funny. Why the hell are Tony Hawk and the O’Connell brothers hanging out at a high school house party? What is David Hasslehoff doing listening to someone tell a story in prison? Why is Vanilla Ice working at a music store acting like a bouncer? Why is Tommy Lee hanging around backstage at a high school pep rally- okay, that one’s obvious but still. Normally I’m not a fan of movies or shows that are heavy on cameos, but I’ll make an exception for The New Guy because they’re just so damn hilariously pointless that they actually make me laugh.

I’m not going to pretend this movie is great, or even good for that matter. The truth is, I’m probably just blinded by nostalgia and the fact that I can relate to the story. But this is a hill that I’m willing to die on. The New Guy wasn’t as bad as critics made it out to be, and bad dialogue aside there’s definitely some funny moments to be found from some lesser known actors that don’t usually get much time to shine on the big screen.

I give The New Guy a 7/10. You probably won’t enjoy this movie as much as I did, but fuck you fight me.