THE ART OF GETTING LET DOWN: PROJECT X REVIEW

     Have you ever been at the movies expecting one thing and getting something completely different?  I don’t mean like you go see Barney and Barbie Take Over Hollywood and it turns into Dog Day Afternoon, that’d be ridiculous and pretty cool. But anyways, today's review is Project X, directed by Nima Nourizadeh and produced by Hangover director Todd Philips.  This is one of those movies that you go expecting one thing and come out with another.

Despite the goblet, this film is nothing like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

     I went to an advanced screening of Project X and was skeptical.  I’ll get to my grade later on but I’ll say now it wasn’t bad.  It’s being billed as “The Hangover with high schoolers”!  I’ll tell you now folks that’s wrong.  That’s wrong as hell.  It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in common with The Hangover besides being about a night of partying. I’ll also point this out before I get to the heavy stuff:  There’s too many high school titties in this movie to be like The Hangover or to avoid possible federal investigation.  If you’re a 45 year old father of 2, don’t see this movie or you’ll have to register as a sex offender.

     Anyways, for the most part, the movie’s pretty solid.  Thomas Mann and Jonathon Brown (playing Tom and JB respectively) have solid performances.  The main cameraman (the movie’s shot from a handheld perspective of multiple characters but not like a bad Cloverfield/Blair Witch Project copy) Dax is a sweet reference to American Beauty and who doesn’t love allusions to great films?  The only performance that will make it or break it for people is Costa, the archetypal annoying-should-be-charismatic-but-really-isn't party guy as played by Oliver Jonah Hill Jr. Cooper.  Within 5 lines I wanted him publically executed, but that’s the exact character they wanted.  Plus he has a couple good lines, mostly about his penis.

^This guy.  The guy on the left.  His penis.

Okay, maybe not.

     The hilarious, extremely self-referential writing and screenplay are pretty fantastic besides the end which I’ll get to later.  The storyline moves quickly and gets pretty bizarre and I love it when that happens.  You really move and flow with the movie, which is always the best thing about a good script.  Plus this movie has almost everything any high schooler and college kid (meaning boy and some lesbians) wants: midgets, flying dogs, ecstasy, boobs, techno, weed, flamethrowers, anarchists, sex jokes, and of course, more booze than Lindsay Lohan drank since last Thursday.

     These among other things are what I absolutely loved about the movie.  The film works like the inverse of most other films.  Whereas most movies have sweet beginnings, middles you might get lost in, and good endings, this movie has an eh beginning, a beautiful, awesome middle, and an absolute grisly, disgusting trainwreck of an ending. 

     
     SPOILER ALERT!: This is what I didn’t like about this movie and it works on a few levels.  The whole time, this film works as if it were much more than the high school party gone awry film.  Everything gets so chaotic, so out of control, so excessive, that you can’t wait for Thomas Mann to get his ass whipped and punished by EVERYONE.  It was at this point that it hit me… This film is deep.  The film COULD BE a philosophical discourse on the nature of modernAmerican youth, cultural divides, coming of age, ecstasy and anarchy versus order and reason through the lens of Lockean and Hobbesian social contract theories (oh look at me being all college-y).  My heart was pounding, my mind was racing I was hooked, a mad junkie desperate for his next fix.  What I thought would be the final shot of a barren grey sky backdrop with Thomas Mann sitting alone and abandoned on the faint, dilapidated blue bleachers was gonna make me cry tears of sadness for him and at the beauty of it as a strangely beautiful work.  But then, right as I was about to give it a standing ovation for its multilayered successes, some strange specter from the deep dank abyss of pop culture came out of nowhere and delivered me such a blow to the stomach that I couldn’t even breathe.  I sat back in my chair for the next 15 minutes dazed, confused and wraught with despair as I watched this film commit cinematic suicide right in front my very eyes.
  

     The film had basically 5 or 6 endings.  The first one (the one I described) was amazing because it would have been open to interpretation and the good guy looked to have lost.  A Greek Tragedy. "What made him powerful kills him"; beautiful shit.  Real Raging Bull, Citizen Kane type shit.  Then the dad comes and is totally okay with what happened to his goddamn house; then everyone at school loves him and he gets the recognition he wanted; then the girl he screwed up with takes him back; then the news raves about the party; and then the executioner delivered the final crushing blow when Costa comes on and alludes to a possible sequel in a stupid staged tv interview.  The final ending is during the credits, where I cry for several hours about the end of the film.

     This movie should have quit while it was ahead but instead, so that it wouldn’t be a dark and moving morality tale of excess and its physical consequences and philosophical implications plus a sweet party flick, plays into every stereotype of the high school party comedy.  Because this movie had to ruin itself with its pitiful, sell out ending that made me and literally everyone else in the movie theatre who just wanted to see an open ending where the good guy tragically loses, want to set Todd Philips on fire, I award Project X despite all its great qualities a C+.

Orson Welles is not a fan.

C+

     Long winded, but true.  Follow me on Twitter for everything you need to know about movies and like the new Page on Facebook! As always,

~Viva amigos,

      ~D. Merrick