‘Campus Crush’ from ABC Family Aims to Cure Back to School Blues

By Germain Lussier on July 31st, 2009

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Nothing eases the pain of a dwindling summer faster than a marathon of school themed programming featuring some of your kids’ favorite stars.

Beginning Saturday August 1, ABC Family is starting “Campus Crush” – a 10 day event featuring  new movies, old favorites, show marathons and new episodes all rolled into one and all with a school setting. Because, let’s face it, ABC Family is hoping that they are doing parents a favor. If your kids watch a week and a half of school set programming, they might feel a little less sad that the summer is just about over.

The whole thing gets into the swing at 7 a.m. Saturday morning with a 12-hour marathon of the critically acclaimed show “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” If you haven’t seen the show, I’ll ruin the secret. She’s pregnant. And though the show has its fair share of melodrama, it’s also pretty well written and honest about the situation. That then rolls into a back to back screening of the movies that made Reese Witherspoon a star: “Legally Blonde” and “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde.” Both movies star Witherspoon as Elle Woods, a ditsy looking but really smart girl who goes to Harvard Law School.

They are showing those two movies as a primer for the big premiere on Sunday night of “Legally Blondes.” The brand new, made for TV third film in the “Blonde” trilogy stars Milly Rosso and Becky Rosso as two Elle Woods clones who move from New England to a prep school in California.

How does ABC Family top that? With another marathon of “The Secret Life” of course. That’s on Monday and will culminate with a brand new episode at 8 p.m. After that is another brand new episode, this time of the show “Make It or Break It” which is about teen girls training in gymnastics for the Olympics. Personally, that sounds like a stretch to the school theme, but they are learning, so I guess it’s okay.

Tuesday is highlighted by new episodes of “10 Things I Hate About You” and “Ruby and the Rockits” and then a showing of the awesome Disney film “Sky High,” which is basically “The Incredibles” meets “Harry Potter” starring Kurt Russell.

Wednesday they’ll be showing the gymnastics film “Stick It” starring Jeff Bridges and Missy Peregrym and Thursday it’ll be “The Prince and I” with Julia Styles. By this point, the whole school theme of the ABC Family event is tangential at best (both lead girls are students in the films). But we will forgive it.

Let’s pretend Friday isn’t part of this event because it’s just an “America’s Funniest Home Videos” marathon.

Saturday will be replaying most of the movies that have already shown leading up to “A Cinderella Story” starring Chad Michael Murray and Hilary Duff where the modern day Cinderalla (Duff) meets her Prince Charming (Murray) at a high school dance.

The movies continue Sunday with the two direct to DVD “Bring it On” sequels at noon and 2 p.m. called “Bring it On Again” and “Bring It On: In It To Win It” followed by “Stick It.” Then they’ll show “Picture This,” which stars “High School Musical” star Ashley Tisdale as an unpopular high school girl who must deceive her father to go to a dance.  That’s followed by “A Cinderella Story” and then its sequel, “Another Cinderella Story” starring Selena Gomez, another Disney starlet.

Finally, Monday Aug. 10 ends the whole thing with two more brand new episodes of “The Secret Life of of the American Teenager” and “Make it Or Break It.”

Basically, ABC Family is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at its viewers for ten days hoping it gets kids in the mood for school. Unfortunately, very few things get a kid in the mood for school. But one must applaud ABC’s valiant effort.

For more information click here and here.