Project X (2012)

Thomas Kub (Thomas Mann) has just turned 17, and his parents will be out of town for the weekend. His friends Costa (Oliver Cooper) and JB (Jonathan Daniel Brown) want to celebrate with the ultimate party in the hopes of getting laid.

Project X is a comedy that was released a couple weeks ago. An alternate title could have been The Ultimate Frat Party: The Movie.

I use the word “comedy” loosely as I can truthfully say I haven’t laughed once for the movie’s entire 87-minute-long run. The movie, shot in a pseudo-documentary style, shows a predictable story starting with Thomas’ father telling him how he expects the house to be in pristine condition by the time he returns and ending quite predictably with the house burning down.

The jokes the movie had to offer aroused a weak nervous giggle out of me at the very best and made me cringe at worst, and the nervous giggles happened maybe two times. I don’t know how a father assuring his wife that his son won’t cause trouble by calling him a loser is supposed to be funny. Needless to say, much of the humor in Project X was sex-related involving countless bouncing breasts, inflatable sex dolls, and gnome that was in reality a stash of ecstasy pills. You know there is a problem when a movie shows a woman urinating on something and tries to pass it off as funny.

The long and short of it is that I simply felt uncomfortable watching Project X. I didn’t really take issue with the fact that it was basically a movie about committing every possible act of debauchery short of murdering for pleasure. Rather, it was the fact that Project X took such subject matter, and then tried to depict it in the most distasteful way possible and have it surrounding the most annoying characters possible (Let me reiterate: our three leads are hoping for sex). Also, seeing bare breasts and upskirt shots of allegedly high school age girls is a little creepy if you ask me. Call me a square, but I wound up sympathizing with the neighbor who called the police complaining about noise when the movie clearly wanted to villainize him as much of the humor was at his expense.

I never recognized the thrill of underage drinking, and I probably never will now that I’m 21. It’s possibly for that reason I had my doubts about Project X from seeing the trailers to begin with. Had I not gone to see Project X with a friend, I would have walked out of the theater about 30 minutes in and demanded my money back. Overall, Project X was about as funny as a child molestation. The only reason it even gets a 1 out of 4 is because it works as a movie on the most basic technical level.

Score: 1/4