Project X Review
Project Why?
Movies about kids having amazing fun and sex in high school are difficult for me to review objectively. My high school experience can only be favorable compared to the Bataan Death March. Between high school and my home life the closest thing to fun I had was throwing bottles at concrete walls on the walk home. Thus I am having to struggle on Project X to divorce my personal feelings and accurately judge this movie on it’s on merits.
Fortunately for my desire to hate all movies involving high school kids enjoying life, once I get past my curtain of bitterness the movie more or less sucks. It is the hideously deformed mutant love child of Superbad and the Hangover, only without the premise, good story, jokes, character dynamic, or script. The story is of the laziest quality, mostly being chunks of YouTube found footage with nothing really connecting the pieces beyond the premise of “let’s have the world’s biggest and most destructive party” combined with the important life lesson for teenagers “high school popularity can be gained by throwing the world’s biggest and most destructive party.” 
What is weird is the main writer, Michael Bacall, also wrote Inglorious Basterds and Scott Pilgrim versus the World, two good movies (actually I have issues with Scott Pilgrim, but that is more from personal issues than real problems with the script. Inglorious Basterds poster from the Movie T Shirt category). I can only figure the studio offered him a ton of money to write something Superhangover-ish, and he dashed out the script on a plane flight to Las Vegas.
I could easily say that the lack of story (or anything else) is simply endemic of the whole found footage movie genre, except for the fact that a couple weeks ago I wrote a review for Chronicle and found it to be extremely well done (Devil Inside was decent too). With those as examples of how a found footage film can rise above the limits of, well, being made of found footage, Project X instead takes the attitude that stories and plots are crutches for directors who don’t have the balls take inane party home movie montages and call it a film. Of the 88 minutes that comprise this movie, only about 30 of them were occupied by anything that could be interpreted as necessary for plot advancement or character development. The remaining hour or so is entirely composed of hot girls dancing in hot pants, swimming topless in a pool, kids drinking, doing drugs, breaking things, jumping off things, or generally destroying a house or two.
The part that galls me, however, is all that being said I actually found myself laughing out loud several times and in general enjoying it. I guess there is a reason party videos are fun to watch. There were a couple scenes I found really funny (including all the ones involving little person Martin Klebba, whom I just heard on an interview on the Howard Stern Show. There is nothing funnier than watching a little person punch a guy in the balls). The brief nude scenes and general hotness of the distaff cast was greatly appreciated by my insensitive straight libido, and the general destruction of everything in the house hearkens me back to the days when all I ever wanted to do was destroy a rich persons home.
The story is, in case you were brain dead while reading the last few paragraphs, of a high school kid who’s parents leave town and he and his two friends destroy the entire neighborhood with the Little Boy of house parties. That’s pretty much it. There is some kind of sub plot involving the main kid Thomas (Thomas Mann. No real credits worth mentioning) having a thing for his childhood friend Kirby (Kirby Bliss Blanton-not a whole lot of credits more than Thomas. She did a couple episodes of Entourage), who is supposed to be the plain Jane that he falls for because of her personality rather than because she was so hot she made my teeth ache. He screws that up by hooking up with the hottest girl in the school Alexis (Alexis Knapp-Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Couple Retreat, Look). There is another sub plot about a ripped off drug dealer who shows but I can’t remember the point of that really.
By the way, is it worrisome that all the actors in this film are playing characters named after themselves? I guess this is an attempt to make this actually look like a real video, but I can’t help but think this is just more lazy film making.
Anyway, kids get drunk. Stuff gets wrecked. Girls are for the most part treated with the same respect you would accord any group of crack addicted strippers (I’m sure the feminists of the world will be thanking the film producers for such an advancement). The story, which started out lagging, is more or less forgotten for about 50 minutes straight. Then, like a collage student suddenly remembering a term paper due in two hours, kicks in for the last 10 minutes in an attempt to actually give the story some kind of conclusion (and more or less failing).
The stars. Like I said, the film had some funny moments and I found myself laughing. One star. Lots of hot women, with some marginally rated R nudity. One star. For some reason this film got a much better performance out of most of the actors than it really deserved. Either the cast is comprised of some really talented future actors or it doesn’t take much of a stretch for teenagers to act like drunken morons at a party. One star. In spite of everything, it wasn’t unfun to watch. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. No story. Two black holes. Completely derivative of (or ripped off from) Superbad and the Hangover. Two black holes. The few plot devices actually wedged between dance party scenes (like why was there a camera guy filming the whole thing, etc) were hamhanded and crude. One black hole. My personal hatred of films trying to convince the world how much fun high school is (if you actually enjoyed high school disregard this one. Also, know that I hate you). One black hole. The fact that the lack of story and the found footage format made me feel like I just spent 88 minutes watching random YouTube videos. Seriously, I kept wanting to minimize the screen and check my email. One black hole. There was one particular character I kept hoping would die of alcohol poisoning. One black hole. The title of the film has nothing to do with the film itself. Would someone please tell the producers that the whole “add X to a title automatically makes it cooler” phenomenon is pretty much overplayed and done. Kids are for the most part wise to that. One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
So a grand total of five black holes. Pretty bad, although to be honest based on the trailers I thought it would score much worse. Like I said, it is not not fun to watch. If you are in high school (or are one of those losers who keeps wishing he was back in high school) you might enjoy it. If you can sneak a bottle of Night Train into the theater with you and proceed to down it odds are you will love this film. Good date movie? Absolutely not. Worth seeing in a theater? Honestly, no. The best treatment for this film would be to wait for it to come out on video and then watch it at home with a bunch of your friends and a large supply of alcohol.
Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu, or post a comment here or via email at [email protected]. I just notice Jason hasn’t posted anything recently either so I will get him back on track here. I can’t do a movie review every day. There are a couple movies floating around that I haven’t seen like Gone or Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds, so I will see what I can see this week. Thanks again. Talk to you all soon.
Dave
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