Plot
On the evening of his 21stbirthday, straight As nerdy student Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) is visited by his high-school best friends - lewd loud mouthed Miller (Miles Teller) and hard working, career minded Casey (Skylar Astin) – who want to take him out on a once in a lifetime party blowout to celebrate his ascension into manhood. Naturally however, things do not go smoothly. After overcoming the oppressive control of Jeff’s father Dr. Chang (François Chou) – and with Jeff’s make or break job interview looming the next morning – can the three friends have the night of their life and make it home in time?
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| They didn't have the heart to tell him that no one else was in the bar. |
Review
When The Hangover landed in 2009 it brought with it a renewed comedic vigour not to mention almost a new genre: the booze-up. With a focus on laddish humour and with a finger pressed firmly to the pulse of ridiculousness (not to mention the help of a genius cameo) it proved a monumental hit. Writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, after working on the sequel and this summer’s threequel, mark their debut in the directing world with 21 & Over. Can they strike gold twice?
No they can’t. Really really really can’t, bro.
With a film like 21 & Over, it’s difficult to decide where to start tearing. The entirely vapid – and yet still unrepentantly unpleasant and unlikeable – characters? The woefully poor writing, comedic or otherwise? The nonexistent ‘plot’? The ludicrous pitiable set-pieces? The entirely flaccid ending? The sheer suffocating boring pointlessness of it all?
21 & Over is a universally, miraculously awful film. But let’s follow that order:
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| This 'gag' is done twice, because what joke isn't funnier when you hear it again 10 minutes later? |
Characters are stupendously formulaic, branching from stereotype to archetype: there’s the stern Chinese father, the nerdy Chinese boy, the studious Jew, the sexy blonde girl-next-door, the douchebag frat-boy and the college drop-out. Not to mention every single other character, event and ‘theme’ (if you can use that word) present.
It says a lot that Skylar Astin’s Casey is one of the few highlights of the film not because the performance is good – he is, in fact, an entirely superficial creation, the charcterisation of which goes as far as ‘he’s a Jew in a suit lolz’ – but, in comparison to the eye-tearingly, gut-punchingly ceaseless repugnancy of Miles Teller’s Miller, he seems like a nice chap. Miller is without a doubt one of the least likeable, most obnoxious and plainly revolting creations in cinema history. Nasty characters can be fun (see Bradley Cooper’s Phil in The Hangover) when they’re well written and still feel like they may have a sense of humanity to them. Miller doesn’t – he’s like the spiritual child of Due Date’s similarly repellent Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) – and is remarkable in his awfulness. If, in fact, he’s a genius satire of college life and comedy itself, then kudos to the writing/directing duo. But seeing as Hell will have long been frozen over by flying icy pigs by then…it doesn’t seem likely.
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| Pictured: the symbolic crux of the narrative. |
Faultlessly formulaic is probably the most apt description of 21…or maybe not actually. There’s so little to this film, so little to actually enjoy outside of the dudebro torrent of swear words and needless racism, it feels almost entirely pointless. There’s clearly been as much care put into the writing and directing that the average person invests in a bowel movement, so why should the audience bother either?
Bottom line, 21 can’t even be reasonably defended as an ‘adult comedy.’ Swearing, drinking, nudity and casual racism/sexism does not an adult comedy make. Believe it or not, adult comedies require the same amount of effort and writing ability as any other film, comedy or no.
There will be some no doubt, who smirk and guffaw about ‘being a prude’ and clearly, if you don’t find it funny, you just ‘don’t get it so run off back to Diary of a Whimpy Kid, thank you very much.’ And these people are the problem, the sort of person who thinks that incongruously calling an Asian person yellow is hilarious because haha Asian people. Or Jews are funny because they’re Jews. Or swearing is funny because of reasons, so lets swear all the time whenever we can over and over and over again. What better way to inject a laugh into a scene than to mumble ‘pussy’ at a wall?
Bodily fluids are shared with wanton abandon, stereotypes are laughed at, dialogue drowns under swearing, women are objectified and a guy eats a tampon: all of these things are jokes in 21, in place of actual writing and the comedic set-up/pay-off dynamic. It’s as lazy as it is wearisome, funny only to the blind drunk or, apparently, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore.
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| He's wearing a tie? At a party? What a dork! |
What’s the point, what are the stakes? Who knows, who cares! The film certainly doesn’t. So long as the young guys keep drinking and swearing (because what else is there to college life after all?) nothing else matters.
Adult comedies have the potential to be incredibly entertaining (from Hot Fuzzto Bad Santa to The Hangover) dumb in the best possible, nonsensical, way. Humour doesn’t need to be refined or intelligent, it doesn’t need layers of exposition or intrigue, it doesn’t even need to make any sense so long as the punch lines are well written and well delivered. 21does neither of these things. Being ‘dumb’ isn’t merely the absence of intelligence, it’s a style all of it’s own and 21 blatantly doesn’t grasp that idea. It’s beyond dumb and finds itself wallowing in the mire of the blindly, unbearably, unpleasantly dull.
To add insult to injury, the sporadic scenes of exposition – where characters perplexingly start talking about their past or the futures for no discernable reason – are perhaps the funniest parts of all. Not because they’re comedic, but because they are so poorly handled and so utterly devoid of any of the depth the scenes are obviously aiming for. Ultimately, when characters as wholly odious like Miller start pandering for sympathy the reaction is to wish pain upon him, not retribution for his issues. Especially when such issue is the ultimate first-world problem: ‘you aren’t f*****g cool anymore, dude. Why won’t you be f*****g cool and drink your f*****g life away with me, you f**k?’ While it can’t be confirmed that that’s an actual line of ‘dialogue,’ it’s a damn close match.
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| Human sacrifice, here a more jolly affair than in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. |
Verdict
A woefully unfunny, insultingly bad (and just plain insulting) clusterfuck in every way possible. I’ve had more entertaining leg cramps.
1/5
A trailer...if you feel like you need to watch even a bit of this film:
You see that little button down there, it's kind of blue and says 'like'? It's really fun to click, honest it is. Apparently, if you enjoy reading something and click on it magical things happen. Guess there's only one way to find out...
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