PROJECT X: DVD

SYNOPSIS:
Three high school seniors throw a birthday party to make a name for themselves. As the night progresses, things spiral out of control as word of the party spreads.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
Officially classified MA15+, it should really be IM18- (suitable for immature audience under 18), a classification that is long overdue for introduction. As juvenile movies become more and more vulgar and anti-social, it is depressing how much laughter they can generate - as did the word-of-mouth preview of this movie which was filled with a young crowd.

What's especially depressing is how this mainstream and populist film confirms to its target market that it is status-confirming among their high school peers to behave so excessively badly. The film's vocabulary is limited and vulgar, the bulk of the action is people getting drunk and drugged, shouting, swearing, exploring every simple genital joke known to immature man, vomiting and smashing things before setting fir to the neighbourhood. If that sounds like your kind of fun, buy a ticket, but comedy it ain't. The laugh-buttons are all the equivalent of poo jokes for 6 year olds.

The film is made especially tiresome by the decision to pretend it is all being filmed by one of the friends of the birthday boy, Thomas (Thomas Mann), whose 17th birthday is the right moment for his friend Costa (Oliver Cooper) to organise an 'epic' party which will turn Thomas from zero to hero at school. Costa does his task so well that over 1,000 young louts descend on Thomas' suburban Pasadena home - in his parents' absence.

The images - by 'the friend behind the camera' - are so laboriously amateurish they jar, and there are several instances where the conceit has to be abandoned so we can see POVs that the friend can not. All too silly.

Of course the mayhem is fun at first, but it gets tedious and ugly quickly, and strains the patience of anyone not interested in getting wasted. I can't even defend the film on the grounds that it succeeds at its own intent, because it has no intent - it has nothing to say.

Published July 4, 2012