Jamie Kennedy has his moments. There were portions of his television show “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” where you would swear that he was a comic/improvisational genius and then a segment or two would fall flat and you would wonder why you were watching this buffoon in the first place. His film “Malibu’s Most Wanted,” also had some brilliant moments amid long stretches of mindless, boring and lazy comedy.

That is apparently the Jamie Kennedy formula and “Kickin It Old Skool” unfortunately doesn’t stray far enough from it.

Kennedy plays the adult Justin Schumacher, a man who awakens from a 20 year coma after critically injuring himself in a break-dancing accident in 1986. Justin is trapped in his adolescent frame of mind - still stuck on his first crush and still hooked on break-dancing, hip-hop and dressing in bandanas, parachute pants and sleeveless t-shirts. When his parents are threatened with losing their house (they have made 20 years of life support payments, after all) Justin decides to re-unite his break-dancing posse in a attempt to win a dance contest.

The situation is ripe for parody and the film actually connects very well early on. Looking at the 21st century through the eyes of a 12 year old from 1986 produces some classically funny lines and bits, but Kennedy and company soon devolve into crass humor and typical plot lines from every underdog team film ever made. While “Kickin It Old Skool” also lands some punches on the recent rash of silly dance and dance competition movies, the satire doesn’t bite hard enough.

Say what you will, but Kennedy has some acting and comedy chops and one gets the feeling that he will find the perfect vehicle for his talents one day. His crew is less funny. In the film they are called the Funky Fresh Boys but they may as well have been called The Stereotypes (geeky Asian, fat Latino, angry African-American). As Justin’s best friends, they have a lot of screen time and not one of them brings anything that great to the film. Neither does the evil foil, Kip Unger, played by Michael Rosenbaum (“Smallville”) nor the extremely generic love interest played by Maria Menonuos (“One Tree Hill”).

For comedies like this to work, they need to completely commit to the absurd world they have created. “Kickin It Old Skool” only goes half way and when things get hard, they go for a gross-out gag or an easy joke. It’s too bad too, because the first half of the film showed some promise. Wait for it to show up on Comedy Central and change the channel about an hour in.

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