This is where a funny caption would go if I could think of any.
(2009) Teen Sex Comedy (Screen Gems) Nicholas D’Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer, Molly Sims, Danneel Harris, Philip Baker Hall, Adhir Kalyan, Annalynne McCord, John Michael Higgins, David Walton, Edie McClurg. Directed by Will Gluck
Ahh, to be young and horny; the arrogance that comes with it and the sad realization that we were all young and horny once. Hopefully, we weren’t all this stupid.
Shawn Colfax (D’Agosto) and Nick Brady (Olsen) are star football players on the Gerald R. Ford High School Tigers and they are entering their senior year. Good looking, popular and with Texas-sized libidos, they’ve been sowing a trail of broken hearts and soiled panties all through their school. Now they are faced with going to football camp with a bunch of sweaty guys and a mealy-mouthed coach (Hall) in the middle of the Texas desert in August. No, I wouldn’t want to do it either.
Instead they concoct a brilliant scheme; they decide to help out the cheerleaders at their camp in idyllic Illinois. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I’d much rather spend the month of August with 300 nubile teenage girls who are limber, horny and have few options to choose from romantically as nearly all the other guys are either gay or old (like 25 years old…grody!). They convince the powers-that-be that going to cheer camp was really what the two guys wanted. Astonishingly, the powers that be agree with them and send them on their way.
Of course, the head cheerleader Carly (Roemer) sees right through them and of course Nick falls hard for her. Shawn, on the other hand, gets the hots for Diora (Sims) who happens to be married to the head cheerleading coach Keith (Higgins). There’s also a group of rival cheerleaders, the Panthers, who like finish first all the time and it’s so unfair. Like, OMG. Their head cheerleader, Gwynneth (McCord) is such a bitch; she, like, always dresses in black and that’s sooooooooo Goth.
But of course, everything turns out okay, despite the machinations of Carly’s boyfriend Dr. Rick (Walton) who’s actually a first year medical student but he wants to get used to the sound of it. And why wouldn’t things turn out okay? It’s cheerleading, man!
Now, the natural inclination is to compare this to Bring It On! and not just because both films have exclamation points in their titles. No, they’re both cheerleading movies and have two groups of rival teams vying for the top spot in a competition, with one team being a perennial champ and the other a perennial doormat. There are a lot of differences however; for one thing, this is much raunchier.
The writing team (operating under the nom de plume of Freedom Jones) tries to liven things up with snappy dialogue that sounds like an unholy crossbreeding of Diablo Cody and Garson Kanin. There are plenty of pop culture references and at times there are some very funny one-liners. Part of my issue is that the dialogue as spoken by these (ahem) teenagers mostly sounds arrogant. I guess it might be hip, but when you dis the message of John Lennon because most of the people who listened to him as contemporaries are in their 50s now then you just sound ignorant.
One other bone I have to pick is that most of the girls in this movie are depicted as bubble-headed idiots waiting for some acne-faced slimeball to charm their way into their pants. I’m not saying teenage girls are the most level-headed strata of our society, but they aren’t all dimwits either.
You don’t see a teen sex comedy for the acting and that holds true here. The performances are okay I guess, just not memorable. When the movie works as it occasionally does, it works really well. However it falls flat in too many places for me to give it anything more than a mediocre rating. It’s not the kind of entertainment you’ll probably care much for fifteen minutes after you’ve seen it. And that, my friends, isn’t necessarily a criticism – sometimes we all need a little disposable comedy to occupy our time.
WHY RENT THIS: The dialogue is clever in places. As teen sex comedies go, this one isn’t too bad.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: A little too much smug, “look at me I’m young and hipper than you ever were” bullcrap. Too many of the girls are too empty-headed.
FAMILY VALUES: Seeing that this is a teen sex comedy, there’s an awful lot of, well, sex. And talking about sex, sometimes in the crudest terms possible. And nudity, not a lot of it but a little. And other bad words which I won’t repeat here. Anyway, you’ve been warned.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although Eric Christian Olsen was playing a high school senior, he was actually 31 years old at the time of filming.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a kinda sorta funny interview from the press junket which goes viciously, horribly wrong but that’s it.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $18.6M on a $20M budget; the movie flopped.
FINAL RATING: 5/10
TOMORROW: War
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