Annapolis Credit: Touchstone Pictures

Abbott and Costello made In the Navy, the Village People sang In the Navy, and now there's a new collection of old movie scrap parts called Annapolis. To tweak a title from the Bob Dylan songbook, call this (at least in military terms) Desecration Row.

A hopeless if harmless boxing picture whose principals just happen to wear uniforms outside the ring, Annapolis is set in a U.S. Naval Academy where no one ever seems to attend class. If nothing else, it gives ever-brooding lead James Franco the chance to perform more squat thrusts than he does in Tristan & Isolde.

Annapolis Credit: Touchstone Pictures

Sired by a beer-eyed father who helps construct monster battleships just off campus grounds (oh, really?), amateur boxer Jake (Franco) and his blue-collar self-esteem have taken a pounding by nearly everyone in his life. The exception was his late mother, who dreamed of her son attending the academy. After bugging his congressman every day for a month, Jake makes the waiting list and then gets the call -- on one day's notice.

With a life-transforming experience instantly awaiting him, Jake does what you or I would do: He goes to a saloon. There, the presumed prostie he hits on at the bar (Jordana Brewster) turns out to be his Navy superior. Later, she will become his trainer of sorts when he labors and lobbies to box an antagonistic Cole (Tyrese Gibson), another superior, in the ring. Oh, well; at least Brewster is cuter in khakis than Burgess Meredith was in all of Rocky.