As a preface to this review, before anyone's knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss my opinions as those of a prude: I'm not at all opposed to "hard-R" comedies. In fact, I love many of them. But something about this one rubbed me the wrong way - indeed, to even refer to it as a "movie" seems wrong: there were scenes chronicling the party that basically devolved into mini-music-videos focusing on naked girls. And not even in tantalizing ways -- rather, these scenes felt creepy (especially since a lot of the girls featured are supposed to be high schoolers) -- for example, the director relies upon paparazzi-style upskirt shots. And because the movie is shot a la Blair Witch/Cloverfield etc. with its "found footage" style, it only makes these shots seem all the dirtier and more voyeuristic.
Moving on past that stuff... other flaws: The fact that the main characters were so clichéd and stereotypical of the genre didn't help, either -- the Jonah Hill-type character from NYC was sporadically amusing but overall just seemed to be trying too hard: the mandatory overzealous good friend who's obsessed with girls and thinks he has game but doesn't. So, nothing original or distinct enough to make him different than any other sex comedy character. He made me laugh a couple times, but that's faint praise.
While the first half of the movie is sort of dumb fun, the second just gets derailed by increasingly silly, unrealistic, borderline disturbing stuff - e.g. a huge sequence with a dude wielding a flamethrower at the end was not just stupid but kind of terrifying, like it belonged in a completely different film.
I also didn't like the 'moral' of the story or whatever you want to call its attempts to reconcile its events. Unfortunately I can't discuss it without spoiling the film, but suffice to say the "feel-good" moral closure of Project X felt like an attempt at Risky Business without any of the actual morality behind it. Not to mention the main character wasn't half as likable or realistic as the Tom Cruise character, despite ostensibly looking more like an actual high schooler than Cruise did - alas, that's why good writing is key. The only word I can use to describe the film is...sleazy, but not in a good way.
Think back on what made films like Superbad so much better than much of their genre: it was the characters. They said and did a lot of crude, dumb stuff, but they were rendered as realistic and likable kids and we could relate to them. When they were put in compromising situations - like an out of control party - it was funny because, as corny as this sounds, we cared. They weren't throwaway caricatures of teenagers, or one-dimensional mean-spirited idiots.
In Project X, whose various elements and characters are basically ripped off of superior teen films, you don't particularly care about any of these kids - nor can you relate to them. Is the film enjoyable? People in the theater laughed - I imagine it'll appeal to its primary demographic, which is the teen/college crowd - but I think years from now those viewers will look back on movies like The Hangover and Superbad and realize why those were better.
(P.S. Don't be fooled by misleading marketing -- while this film was indeed produced by Todd Phillips, he did not direct it. The studio is capitalizing on his involvement - and can you blame them for it when the Hangover films have made like a billion dollars worldwide? - but apart from a producer credit, he didn't have anything to do with this flick.)
Moving on past that stuff... other flaws: The fact that the main characters were so clichéd and stereotypical of the genre didn't help, either -- the Jonah Hill-type character from NYC was sporadically amusing but overall just seemed to be trying too hard: the mandatory overzealous good friend who's obsessed with girls and thinks he has game but doesn't. So, nothing original or distinct enough to make him different than any other sex comedy character. He made me laugh a couple times, but that's faint praise.
While the first half of the movie is sort of dumb fun, the second just gets derailed by increasingly silly, unrealistic, borderline disturbing stuff - e.g. a huge sequence with a dude wielding a flamethrower at the end was not just stupid but kind of terrifying, like it belonged in a completely different film.
I also didn't like the 'moral' of the story or whatever you want to call its attempts to reconcile its events. Unfortunately I can't discuss it without spoiling the film, but suffice to say the "feel-good" moral closure of Project X felt like an attempt at Risky Business without any of the actual morality behind it. Not to mention the main character wasn't half as likable or realistic as the Tom Cruise character, despite ostensibly looking more like an actual high schooler than Cruise did - alas, that's why good writing is key. The only word I can use to describe the film is...sleazy, but not in a good way.
Think back on what made films like Superbad so much better than much of their genre: it was the characters. They said and did a lot of crude, dumb stuff, but they were rendered as realistic and likable kids and we could relate to them. When they were put in compromising situations - like an out of control party - it was funny because, as corny as this sounds, we cared. They weren't throwaway caricatures of teenagers, or one-dimensional mean-spirited idiots.
In Project X, whose various elements and characters are basically ripped off of superior teen films, you don't particularly care about any of these kids - nor can you relate to them. Is the film enjoyable? People in the theater laughed - I imagine it'll appeal to its primary demographic, which is the teen/college crowd - but I think years from now those viewers will look back on movies like The Hangover and Superbad and realize why those were better.
(P.S. Don't be fooled by misleading marketing -- while this film was indeed produced by Todd Phillips, he did not direct it. The studio is capitalizing on his involvement - and can you blame them for it when the Hangover films have made like a billion dollars worldwide? - but apart from a producer credit, he didn't have anything to do with this flick.)