Susan Granger’s review of “Project X” (Warner Bros.)
Perhaps every generation of parents needs a cautionary tale about leaving a teenager home alone for the weekend. After all, at first glance, Thomas (Thomas Mann) is a shy, nerdy Southern California high school senior about to celebrate his 17th birthday.
“This is Thomas we’re talking about…He’s not exactly Mr. Popular,” Thomas’ dad explains to his mom as they depart to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
So certain rules are set: Thomas can have a few friends over but there’s to be no drinking, no drugs, and no one is to enter his father’s sacrosanct office or touch his father’s prized Mercedes Benz. But Thomas’ sex-starved buddies, foul-mouthed, fast-talking Costa (Oliver Cooper) and tubby tag-a-long J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown) have other ideas: namely, a blowout birthday bash, a bacchanal so awesome that it will become a “game changer,” catapulting them into local legends and assuring their popularity. And that’s precisely what happens, as documented by Dax (Dax Flame), who videotapes the out-of-control proceedings for posterity, resulting in the faux ‘found footage’ gambit, filled with topless, Ecstasy-popping babes in a bouncy house and cavorting in the swimming pool.
And when the thousands of reckless revelers really go wild, a raunchy, full-scale riot occurs, intimidating not only the 12 year-old “security guards” but also the local police and, potentially, incinerating the entire neighborhood. Viewing the rage destruction, Thomas, quite predictably, wails, “My parents are going to kill me.” Would that they had.
Formulaically co-written by Matt Drake and Michael Bacall (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”), based on Bacall’s contrived story, it’s transparently directed by Nima Nourizadeh and slickly produced by Todd Phillips (“The Hangover”), evoking amoral memories of “American Pie” and “Superbad” yet surpassing either of those in a deafening fantasy montage of home-wrecking and degrading sexism, vulgarity, homophobia and advocacy of hedonism. And, by the way, if you’re looking for veracity, there is no North Pasadena; it’s a fictional suburb.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Project X” is a crude, repetitive, offensive 1, propelling the R-rated teen sex comedy cycle.
