“TOTALLY AWESOME”

Tonight at 9 on VH1

(two stars)

IT hardly needs to be said that producing a TV movie spoofing the movies of the 1980s is not exactly a timely exercise.

But this is VH1, a cable network obsessed with partitioning our cultural history by decade, with particular (and incessant) attention paid to the ’80s.

“Totally Awesome” is presented as a long-lost movie made in that decade that was never released due to financial and legal problems.

Deadpan “host” Ben Stein – who was evidently hired because of his association with the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” – introduces the movie, explaining its “origins” and positioning its premiere on VH1 as possessing pop-cultural significance.

It’s all a joke, of course, and “Totally Awesome” soon reveals itself as one of those movies that aspires to be “so bad, it’s good.” Some people enjoy this kind of approach. For me, a bad movie’s a bad movie – whether it intends to play that way or not. My philosophy is: If you’re going to make a bad movie, why make a movie at all?

There may be a handful of people for whom the prospect of a TV movie lampooning ’80s movies such as “Flashdance” (1983) and “Footloose” (1984) presents a better entertainment option than, say, sitting motionless in a chair staring out a window for two hours.

I sincerely hope those people who choose “Totally Awesome” over staring out the window enjoy themselves.

They might have fun identifying the film’s many references to ’80s movies – including the aforementioned dance movies, plus other flicks such as “Dirty Dancing” (1987), “Teen Wolf” (1985), “Soul Man” (1986), “The Karate Kid” (1984) and, probably, many others.

Here’s my problem: As “Totally Awesome” made me realize, I must not have gone to a single movie during the entire decade of the ’80s. Or, if I did (and my memory of that decade is a bit fuzzy), I didn’t go see any of the movies being spoofed here.

Despite this deficiency, I had no trouble comprehending the satirical aspects of “Totally Awesome.” That’s the nice thing about movies such as this that are written on a third-grade level.

In an otherwise mediocre movie, two members of the cast stand out – Dominique Swain, as a stereotypical dance-crazy teen from the 1980s, and Tracy Morgan, who can get a laugh just by showing up.