"When it comes to friendship, there is no middle ground" -- Will Beckford to his friend Luke McNamara as Will walks out during an argument between the two.

Obviously there is. I say this because there is no way this film got released without producer/writer John Pogue and director Rob Cohen (Dragon - the Bruce Lee Story and Dragonheart) showing it to at least some of their close friends. I don't know how those close friends could have refrained from telling Pogue and Cohen what a bad movie The Skulls was, without there being some middle ground in friendship.

The Skulls is an attempt to take us behind the closed doors of the secret societies that exist on some Ivy League campuses. I'll leave it for you to figure out whether or not there is any connection between Pogue's choice of "Skull" and the fact that former President George Bush and his son, current presidential candidate George W. Bush Jr., both belong to the secret Skull and Bones society.

Joshua Jackson of Dawson's Creek fame is Luke Mc Namara. A townie, now attending the college whose name the movie doesn't utter, but it is in New Haven after all, Luke is the classic example of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks on his way up. He works crazy hours to survive and somehow manages to do all this while starring on the 8 man crew team and keeping a GPA that will get him into the Law School. Of course, the problem is that Luke will be in debt forever if he borrows the money for law school, at $45,000 per year, so that has led him to consider joining The Skulls if he is offered membership. He's heard they pay for grad school tuition. Seems a reasonable basis for such a decision.

But Will Beckford, Luke's best friend and coxswain on the 8 man crew team (Hill Harper) is opposed. He is the first to say that "if it's secret, it must be bad". What we don't know early on is that Will is doing an expose story on the secret societies in his role as a student journalist. Luke's acceptance causes a rift between the two friends that Chloe (Leslie Bibb) who is friend to both of them tries to heal. Of course, Luke has it bad for Chloe and she feels the same, but because he doesn't feel his background makes him worthy, he won't say anything about it. As he says "...her family has a private jet, I've never even been on a jet."

Then, at the stroke of midnight comes the invitation to Luke. In the form of a phone call that turns into a very wild night indeed. Better experienced than described. But ultimately, Luke becomes a skull and is bonded to his Skull soulmate, Caleb Mandrake (Paul Walker). The problems for Luke begin here and escalate very quickly.

If the real-life secret societies are anything like what we see in The Skulls then there are good reasons for keeping what they do secret, because it's ridiculous and amazingly unbelievable. This wasn't designed as a comedy, but some of the plotpoints are so unbelievable that I found myself laughing out loud in places where thecreative minds behind The Skulls hadn't wanted laughs.

In the final analysis, we are given nothing more than formulaic, predictable pablum that we're supposed to lap up eagerly like hungry dogs, because it looks nice on screen and is done with good-looking actors who go through the motions of emoting. Nice theory on paper, but it just didn't translate to celluloid.