"And when it's time to relax/Miller stands clear/beer after beer..."

Or perhaps not.

On exiting a Wednesday night screening of Project X, I was surprised to encounter an esteemed cultural critic of my acquaintance, someone I never expected to be taking in the film. (And come to think of it, I never DID find out why he was there.) "Isn't it funny," I said, "how invariably horribly politically retrograde these ostensibly radically outrageous teen films tend to be?" "Indeed," he responded, smiling wryly and adding, "I have to say, as a homosexual, I was a little nervous."

The rampant hostility displayed by Project X is enough to make pretty much all humans nervous. And of course the one "demo" the movie isn't overtly hostile to, straight white male teens, it merely lies to. My review for MSN Movies is here. 

Comments

[joe]

it's pretty funny that the kid's name is thomas mann. and "erotic unobtanium," thanks for that one.

[warren oates]

I thought this was a reboot of the Broderick film about monkeys. Lame!

[bill]

I want to see this movie the least amount out of all the movies there are.

[jbryant]

bill: If you change your mind and go see this, make sure it's on a Friday night. The audience will undoubtedly be mostly made up of packs of teens, so it'll be like seeing it in Sensurround!

[Keith Uhlich]

Probably better than seeing it in Feel-Around.

[Lee]

This might cheer you up some, Glenn. I think I was behind you and the Siren in the theater when this one played. (Not to creep you out or anything.)

http://www.amazon.com/Blessed-Event-Lee-Tracy/dp/B0079R1KLU/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1330720048&sr=1-1

[Anthony]

This article shows how old you are... You should probably retire you old fart.

[Glenn Kenny]

Fifty-two, to be precise, Antony. And I agree. You wanna contribute to my retirement fund, tip jar is in the column on the left. Although I wouldn't hold it against you if you're needing to save up to buy your first handjob. From YOUR UNCLE.

[Tom Russell]

This movie does sound almost as bad as THE HANGOVER, if not worse.

And not to glom onto a throw-away, Glenn, but: what's so reactionary about Betty and Veronica?

[Glenn Kenny]

Tom, you certainly can't be unaware of the girls' status as archetypes of hetero-normative hegemony, for real. Yo.

[jbryant]

Glenn, I think it's a terrible insult to Anthony for you to suggest that his uncle would CHARGE him for a hand job.

[Glenn Kenny]

Aw, J.; see, there ya go, makin' me FEEL bad...

[bill]

This thread got really bad for a second, but then it got good again.

[Tom Russell]

Oh, that. D'oh.

[The Siren]

Lee, I can't believe you reminded me that I LEFT OFF BLESSED EVENT when I wrote up my best old movies of 2011. Now I am suicidally depressed...oh wait, wrong thread. Or is it?

[Frank McDevitt]

It's rather telling that most of the Rotten Tomatoes users are rating the film highly because it has "titties". I guess the filmmakers knew their audience.

[LexG]

This is LITERALLY my favorite movie in 15, maybe 20 years.

It's ecstatic, giddy, awesome, hilarious, hypnotic, has an AWESOME SOUNDTRACK, and is EXACTLY what I wish my life was like now, or had been when I was 17, or will be when I'm 57.

If you like strobes, drinking, loud rap music, HOT CHICKS, legs, boobs, skinny women, women's bare feet, lingerie looking models, kegs, flamethrowers, fat kids getting owned, or an awesome dude talking smack (the kid who plays Costa is a genius), you will like this. And if you don't like that stuff, well... you goddamn well should.

Anyone who gives this less than four stars isn't anyone I'd ever wanna know. I've already seen it 3 times... It's the GoodFellas of all youth movies... Like if Scorsese, Mann and Kubrick made a more cinematic and awesome version of Risky Business crossed with Dazed and Confused.

My only issue was it needed more actual banging... It's sort of left unclear whether the 3 doofuses are getting any all the way... then a postscript seems to clear it up in a mystifying way.

But who cares. All hail Todd Phillips, GOD OF ALL CINEMA.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Frank McDevitt: In the Rotten Tomatoes users' defense, the, um "titties" are pretty consistently, um, high-grade. Although I felt rather like a creep for noticing. But hey, any port in a storm?...

Robert Christgau: "So if you find yourself valuing many of my C pluses and rejecting a lot of my As, maybe we'd better not have lunch."

[Andrew Wyatt]

I, too, applaud the term "erotic unobtanium". To have it in our lexicon is to make the existence of PROJECT X a worthwhile thing.

[Joel]

The line in the review about the flamethrower made this movie sound way more appealing than you probably intended. On the other hand, I really don't like strobes--at least not as much as I like boobs and drinking--so maybe I'll wait this one out.

[Frank McDevitt]

Is Lex just trolling at this point? I honestly can't tell.

[Oliver_C]

In other news this weekend, hee hee hee, "liberal environmental indoctrination" 'The Lorax' continues the Condemned-by-Batshit-Insane-Rightwingers-but-Cleans-Up-at-the-Box-Office trend previously observed with 'The Lion King' and 'Harry Potter', among many others.

[BobSolo]

Ugh. However you feel about global warming or whatever, LORAX is a preachy slog. Who better to lecture us all on wasteful living than the Hollywood plutocrats behind a $70 million dollar bore with a $200 million dollar marketing/product tie-in budget?

[Not David Bordwell]

I don't think LexG is trolling, but I'm pretty sure Evan Glodell just took all of Lex's Bellflower endorsements off his office door...

[Joel Bocko]

I learned from the Metacritic tab at the bottom of your review that the New York Times review was "100% positive." Wow - like many of your other readers, I'd take the Broderick flick over this in a second; actually, I'd take just that one scene where the chimp is being radiated and turns to look at the camera in slow-motion with a pained expression. I imagine that's what it feels like to watch (the new) Project X...

[Joel Bocko]

Oh, and another thing about the title confusion - what ever happened to the "high concept" movie? 25 years ago, a film called "Project X" was about some guy saving a bunch of chimps from radiation poison; cliched and silly it might have been (I liked it when I saw it, but then, I was 11) but at least it had what they used to call a "hook." In this age of reboots and endless franchises, the best they can come up with for an "original" movie is (drumroll, please)...teenagers throw a party while their parents are away. And...well, nothing, really, apparently that's it. At least Superbad had the penis drawings. Hell, they couldn't even come up with an original title; not only does this filch the Broderick, it's literally the most generic title you could ever come up with - even "Anonymous" or "The Movie" has more pizazz.

I realize there was a time when critics decried "gimmicky" mainstream movies, but frankly at this point a fresh premise, an audience-appealing "hook", an original concept, seems positively avant-garde. What does it say that in 2012 (nearly 2015) Back to the Future would be too left-field to get made? Well, it does have Crispin Glover...

[Gordon Cameron]

On the other hand, people who have seen Transformers 3 have told me it looks like some kind of weird psychedelic trans-narrative acid-house art cinema compared to the blockbusters of yesteryear.

[Joel Bocko]

Yes, there is the Richard Corliss argument to consider (I actually don't know what his take on Transformers 3 was - apparently even Armond White bailed on Bay this time - but praising it would certainly fit in with his general trend now). I feel like I generally privilege form over content (although ideally the two work well together) but I guess I don't particularly care for CGI-era "form" either. Maybe the blockbuster has grown aesthetically more adventurous, but it's not an adventure I'm very interested in signing on for.