Project X
Movie Details
- Genre: Comedy
- Release Date: 2012-03-02 Nationwide
- Running Time: 88 min.
- Director:
Nima Nourizadeh
- Cast: Jonathan Daniel Brown, Miles Teller, Alexis Knapp, Thomas Mann, Martin Klebba, Eddie Hassell, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Sam Lant, Nichole O'Connor
- Writer: Matt Drake
- Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
- Official Site: Project X Official Site
"There's a midget in the oven!" is about as inspired as the dialogue and set pieces get in this queasy-making entertainment about a 17-year-old dude's birthday bacchanalia. Produced by The Hangover's Todd Phillips, Project X repackages that franchise's skull-numbing hedonism without consequences and second-nature misogyny for the SAT-taking set, while reassuring young men that there's no more ennobling purpose than to "get high, fuck bitches." His parents out of town for the weekend, Thomas (Thomas Mann), a meek, overlooked senior at his Pasadena high school, tries to improve his popularity by hosting a blowout--an event aggressively publicized by his Queens-transplant friend Costa (Oliver Cooper, strongly resembling a junior Brett Ratner and accurately described by one partygoer as "that dick in a sweater-vest"). While the rager--presented as the spliced "documentary" footage of a friend with a camera and hundreds of mobile devices--spirals into chaos (a car at the bottom of the pool, gobbled-up ecstasy), plenty of teenage titties are bared, a helpful reminder to adolescent girls that they can grow up to be actresses in Hollywood comedies. When an avenging pot dealer shows up with a flamethrower, the wish is only for these little fuckers to be set ablaze.
Melissa Anderson