Degrassi Spring Break Comes Up Short on Depth and is—Alas!—More Cliche Than Usual

The made-for-TV movie: a very specific subgenre marked by an obscenely long playtime and a certain amount of over-the-top drama. Watching a made-for-TV film always requires some degree of suspension of disbelief at its theatrics. Inevitably, someone will cry, hearts will be broken and mended, someone might even get killed, and without a doubt, everything will be resolved in about three hours.

Combining this tried and true formula with the categorically ridiculous plot lines and histrionic characters of Canadian teen show Degrassi: The Next Generation should have been a sure success. But, alas, the Degrassi Spring Break Movie falls flat, serving more as a double episode than any kind of a movie, let alone the vaunted made-for-TV film.

First of all, and most importantly, the Degrassi Spring Break Movie runs at a cool 42 minutes, without commercials. Taking the same amount of time as the season finales and "special episodes" (usually dealing with things like rape, drug abuse, or stripping), the movie does little to distinguish itself from a normal Degrassi double episode. In fact, less than a movie, this merely seems like a season, or even series, finale.

Beyond the complete absence of cinematic form, the Degrassi Spring Break Movie also fails to deliver on the epic themes and plot lines suggested by the tantalizing previews. The N promised a road trip, but the amount of time spent in the car is minimal, and the dynamics of friendship and enmity are ignored just to make an easy trip to fictional Smithdale University.

Nothing exciting ever happens, even when it seems like it might. Jay, Spinner, and Jimmy all get arrested! But Jay simply makes a phone call to straighten it all out, and it turns out to be a small bump in the road before the boys get rolling again. There's a surprise special guest at the Purple Dragon concert! But the former lead character Craig is really the only surprise guest Degrassi seems to have had up its sleeve.

But beyond the overriding issues of the movie, the actual plot is pretty lame, too. Manny and Jay have been pretending to be engaged, but their continued physical relationship calls into question how much they're actually pretending. They get in a fight, so Jay takes her demo reel for her Smithdale audition and replaces it with a racy make-out scene. It's very formulaic, and it hearkens back to a lesson Manny should have already learned—beware of the home video.

And as for other story lines, all we have is Darcy Edwards, attempting to get over her rape through a "tough love for difficult teens" wilderness program. Although the adult themes are nothing to scoff at, this plot already played out with Paige in an earlier season. Moreover, Darcy's incredibly rapid recovery is insulting and way off-base with the Degrassi style.

That inconsistency is the most disappointing part of the Degrassi Spring Break Movie. While always over the top, Degrassi prides itself on being a show that bases itself on real teen issues, not hour-long conclusions of rape trauma and characters inserted as backup chatter for Manny's love quests. The easily concluded drama might sit well in any other made-for-TV movie, but it doesn't work for Degrassi, and the Degrassi Spring Break Movie should simply have stayed as the made-for-TV show it was clearly meant to be.