Project X

Coming into PROJECT X, my expectations were set for a good hour and a half of complete and total crap. The film had been panned by critics, and I couldn't see Judd Apatow's crowd coming up with anything resembling authenticity. What I got instead though, was a film that had the same disease as CHRONICLE. Both films attempt to show a slice of teenage highschooler life in 2012. Both succeed at that, but, because they have to be billed so that people will want to go and see them, there's an edge to them. For CHRONICLE, that edge was that one kid went batshit and blew the fucking shit out of the town. For PROJECT X, which begins as a movie about a kid's birthday party, the edge is that the party blows the fucking shit out of the town. I can see where these movies would be without their edges, they would be wallowing in indie netflix-instant-watch land. They would simply be entertaining movies that have defined what it's like to be a teenager in 2012. That's why it's such a shame that both films miserably fail. PROJECT X, for example, shows some real authenticity with the way everybody talks, how much everyone drinks, and how fun and out of hand the party gets. Once everybody's on ecstasy at the party, it's hard to keep your mind on how consequences will come. But the way that the filmmakers have captured what these parties are "like" is pretty damn masterful. And then, they have to go and ruin it all with a flair that is so Apatow it makes me sick: the delusion that a lot of beer makes any model-crazy-hot-babe screw any tub of lard curly haired jew. That's the problem with Apatow films: they're a fantasy, and on top of that, they just add insanity to what would have otherwise been a good film. Once a midget breaks through the sunroof of a car and drives it into the pool, once a crazy guy takes a flamethrower to the neighborhood, once you add a title-card that tries to convince us the movie actually happened, your movie blows. For a film that is purely about the goings-on of a party, why add more to that? There's so much needless fantasy awarded on top of the party-holders, a trio of nerdos who, by chance, get their party to go crazy good. It's just another entry of sighs in 2012.

★★ out of Five