The location is the U.S. Naval Academy, but you've been to Annapolis before, several times over.

This rousing, crowd-pleasing drama crams in every underdog cliche, as well as every boxing-movie cliche and military-movie cliche. Surely one of these alone would have been sufficient.

James Franco stars as Jake Huard, an unlikely Annapolis freshman (or plebe) who comes from a blue-collar background where no one expects him to succeed - not his friends or the stoic father who never showed him any love, and especially not himself.

"This place isn't good enough for you?" asks his best friend, a co-worker at the Annapolis shipyards. Meanwhile, his father asks him the night before he leaves, "What the hell is it you do want?" Clearly, Jake will have to show them all.

But as he and his classmates go through the requisite training and hazing - in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain - Jake repeatedly brings everyone else down. The one thing he can do, though, is fight (how's that for a heavy-handed metaphor?) which allows him to square off against his demanding commanding officer (Tyrese Gibson in a perpetual scowl). Franco, who won a Golden Globe four years ago for playing James Dean in a TV movie, bulked up for this role but keeps the same look on his face.

He has solid chemistry with Vicellous Shannon as his struggling, overweight roommate and Donnie Wahlberg as the lieutenant commander who becomes his ersatz fight trainer. Jordana Brewster has a natural likability as Jake's would-be love interest, a female midshipman in her second year at the academy.

Director Justin Lin's film, based on a script by Dave Collard, does have its moments of unexpected humour. It's sort of surprising, though, that Annapolis is so formulaic. The first movie Lin directed on his own, 2003's Better Luck Tomorrow, about overachieving Asian high school students who go on a crime spree, was hailed for its innovation. Then again, that was an independent effort, his own vision; this is feel-good studio fare.

The music swells at all the right moments, cuing us to feel awe-struck, inspired, sympathetic, etc. But it completely smothers The Big Showdown between Huard and Gibson's hard-driving Matt Cole. (Gibson is a sight to behold, though; if you think the former Guess? jeans model looks sharp in his crisp white uniform, wait 'til he takes his shirt off in the ring.) The fight is hard enough to watch anyway - not because it's brutally bloody, but because it's impossible to tell what's going on through all the jumpy camerawork and hyperactive edits.

Whether or not Jake comes out the winner when the final bell has rung - you guessed it - there are no losers here. Oh, except for the guys who got kicked out for insubordination or illegally making out with a girl. At least they did something daring.

Two stars out of four.