Features > Movie Reviews > Project X…

He says no to drugs… well, not weed, necessarily, and you could twist his arm to take an E, but in general he’s not about to shoot up or anything. He wouldn’t dream of smashing stuff up just for the fun of it – least of all his parents' comfortably middle class California home. But it’s his birthday – the folks are away – his buddy Costa is egging him on to make tonight a game-changer, somehow all that stuff just happens.

A kind of adolescent The Hangover (Todd Phillips has a producer credit) minus the clever structure but mercifully less of a ripoff than The Hangover Part II, Project X dedicates about an hour of its 88-minute running time to the party itself. Thomas is concerned that no one will show up – after all, he only has three real friends. But Costa (Oliver Cooper) has him covered, and with social media being what it is these days, once the word gets out there’s no knowing where things could end up.

Directed by first timer Nima Nourizadeh in the camcorder style more often associated with horror flicks like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield (Thomas’s birthday is being chronicled by the enigmatic Dax), Project X tries to juice up a familiar story of youthful mayhem with an injection of reality TV shlock and awe. The bits the kids will be talking about after have a YouTube feel: an unexpected tasering incident; a vertically challenged gentleman who is bundled into an oven then gets his revenge punching everyone within sight under the belt; a family pet involved in antics big and small.

Still, while there was a smattering of gasps and what sounded like forced laughter at the preview screening I went to, the movie never brought down the house in the way it was obviously supposed to – and the handheld/jump cut style may well have had something to do with it (though it never seems to hurt The Office any). Comedy is famously all in the timing, and neither Nourizadeh nor his fresh-faced cast shows much instinct in that regard.

The party itself – inspired by a real life incident in Australia, when 500 teenage party crashers turned a quiet suburb into a near riot – isn’t paced with any skill; its escalation – or descent – into chaos is only haphazardly observed. In short, the movie tries to raise the stakes on the likes of Animal House, Risky Business, and Superbad, but lacks the craftsman and comic imagination to pull it off.

Do I need to point out that it’s also sexist and puerile? Surely not, that comes with the territory. But it’s kind of depressing to see how casually Costa addresses the young women in his class as “bitches” and “hos”, and he’s never called on it (least of all by them). Sure, his gangsta talk is caricature, but the movie’s worldview seems equally circumscribed by the influence of rap, reality TV, and porn. Ho-hum. I wish it were funnier.