No.298 : We the Party (2012)

We the Party at the IMDb

I had mild hopes for this film having looked up the poster and some lesser reviews. Would it be a fresh and funny take on the issues of race, growing up and having a good time in a multi-ethnic Los Angeles High School? Sadly these hopes were dashed after five minutes when five diverse friends got together to make a bet : Who can lose their virginity by prom night? I appreciate teenage boys think only of getting laid but surely a slightly different take could have been offered when visiting this tired and overpopulated genre?

To be fair it isn’t the usual frat style film with gross out gags and a lot of nudity. This was a more leisurely take with the five lads going about their conquests in different ways. They all learned a little, gained some respect for the ladies and mostly got a little love.

The guys hold a pre-prom party and hand out flyers with ‘We the Party’ suggesting that they are hip dudes. We know they are not and the usual high school favourites of bully, jock, popular girl and stoner all have to be won over before the party is a success and our guys become bone fide playas.

There is a bit of learning too with an ethics teacher trying to get the kids to understand what is valuable in life - not cars and houses, but leaving a legacy like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jnr. Our crew take this on board and one delivers his own take on the environment to great acclaim. I’d bet in the real world he’d have been soundly beaten afterwards but it was well scripted and performed.

The pace is sedate at best with long scenes that go nowhere accompanied to a smooth R&B soundtrack. Most of theses scenes involve fine young ladies in bikinis romping around in swimming pools so you can understand that they are playing to their audience of horny teenage guys - and me.

There isn’t much in the way of peril with the $20 a head bet never going to be disastrous for anyone. Some of it is however a bit on the nose with a long scene with a guy looking up girls’ skirts with a camera on his boot , complete with crotch shots, seriously misjudged.

There are some moral values employed with a school project centred around finding out the stories of homeless people. This sits awkwardly alongside the horny youth story line but you can’t say there isn’t something for everyone in here. The concert using their footage to a rap with an orchestral arrangement was great and it seemed all was going well until the prom money was stolen! Can it be recovered and will all of our cast, including the fat white girl in the body cast, find love?

Director Mario Van Peebles manages to get most of his extended family into the cast alongside a hardly seen Snoop Dogg who looked fetching in his pig tails.

Overall this was a decent slice of life with some good academic scenes set along side things more dubious. The young and mostly good looking cast did well with thin material and although everyone grew a bit I’m happy to say that I learned nothing. The soundtrack wasn’t my kind of thing but it was easy to get immersed in the beautiful people in sunny L.A and as a time passer you‘ll do a lot worse.

Best Bit : Pool Party  ’W’ Rating : 17/23.

No.281 : Who’s Your Daddy? (2002)

Who's Your Daddy at the IMDb

Back to school once again in this straight to video romp that more or less follows the plot of every rags to riches film you’ve ever seen. Indeed it is a near carbon copy of recent ‘W’ movie shitefest 'Whatever it Takes‘ which preceded this effort by a couple of years. Despite it having a plot revolving round a porn empire this one is worse, a lot worse.

Our hero is Chris a senior at high school who looks about 30. The actor, whose career was pretty much killed by this film was in fact 22, but a lot older looking that his supposed 18 years, which makes it extra creepy when his mother walks in on him choking the chicken. He hangs around with the usual cast of dweebs and losers and fantasies about the hot girl in school, whilst failing to notice the cute school paper editor has the hots for him. Sound familiar?

We get a full half hour of dorky activity such as the gang trying to entice girls to their party and Chris being hit on the head by a ball three times in one scene. It wasn’t funny the first time but let’s see if repetition adds anything?

Eventually a lawyer named Mike Hunt (Thanks ‘Porkies’) shows up and tells Chris that his natural parents have died and that he is now the owner of the leading stroke mag in the country ‘Heaven’. All is not well however as the lawyer and an evil Uncle are trying to cheat Chris out of his inheritance. It’s like the script was on autopilot!

Chris heads off to the Playboy, sorry Heaven mansion and meets all the ‘Angels’ - various women with their knockers hanging out - and Lin Shaye’s secretary who ill advisedly wears suspenders throughout. After a few fumbles Chris goes full on prick mode and starts lording it over his fat hanger on and his classmates. He hooks up with the hot girl who has her own agenda and dumps on the pretty school paper editor. She won’t remember!

Soon enough, the baddies wrest control of the Empire from Chris and he has to win it back. Can he and some bimbos and nerds produce a magazine in time and come up with some unlikely twists to regain control? Of course they can! Just in time to get the nice girl too - she didn’t bear a grudge!

This was an awful effort and you can see why it earned its ‘video premiere’. You’d think for a film with dozens of topless women high marks would be earned but the plot was so basic and dull no amount of eye candy could save it.

Chris was a terrible character both in nerd and prick modes and you genuinely couldn’t give a toss for his endeavours. There were some decent actors showing up such as the asshole reporter out o the ‘Die Hard’ Films but they’ll all have Tippexed this one off their CVs. Special mention to Patsy Kensit who must have experienced her career low here, fondling a giant butt plug and trying to sell herself as ‘Miss May’ at 34 amongst a gaggle on teenage and enhanced models.

The morals were all pretty dubious too, with the principled school paper editor happily taking over the porno shoot. The idea that the magazine’s subscribers would take to her tasteful shots and feminist articles was one of the few chortles in the script.

You’d probably do well to find a copy of this dud but if you see it in the charity shop save yourself some embarrassment and hide it in a copy of ‘Razzle’ when you take it to the counter.

Best Bit : Arriving at the mansion.  ‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.279 : Whatever It Takes (2000)

Whatever It Takes at the IMDb

Back to school now for a look at this formulaic but still fun high school film that sees early outings from Jesse Pinkman and James Franco. If you have seen any film where the prom is a feature of the finale you’ll have pretty much seen this, especially if you are a student of Cyrano De Bergerac and the all-time classic ‘Pretty in Pink’.

Our hero is Ryan, a nerdy accordion player who is starting to outgrow his dweebish friends including Pinkman, doing a poor man’s Jeff Spicoli, and Tom Hanks’ son. He lives next door to Maggie and the two talk across their unfeasibly close balconies. From the first scene you know that they will end up together, but we’ve got 90 minutes to fill so let’s have them as just good friends for now.

Ryan fancies the high school sweetheart in the shape of the unobtainable Ashley, whilst high school jock Franco likes Maggie. With both men having no chance of landing their chosen babe they hatch a plan to help each other pimp out their friend so that some stranger can get his hole. Lovely.

There are some slim slide plots including Pinkman’s quest for a bit of a statue and a funny and sadistic games teacher played by that guy off ‘The West Wing’ who throws baseballs at the kids and tells them to “Walk it off”. Grrr hope he gets his comeuppance!

The sordid plan goes well but Ryan soon realises the hot girl isn’t all that. She has a hairy back and scabby feet. Seems nice enough though, until she disparages a midget at a carnival and pukes up, so she deserves all she gets. Meanwhile Ryan is feeding Franco lines so that he can make some headway with Maggie.

This involves the world’s oldest computer and a scene ripped off, fully intact from ‘Roxanne’, but soon we’re off to the prom. Who will end up with whom and will the mildly bad people get a fitting finale? Of course!

This was mild ‘12’ certificate fun but there was enough subversive humour to keep me entertained. Most of it was due to Pinkman in his first role, who has most of the best lines and, it looked like, the most fun. The lead is a bit dull and the hottest girl in school wasn’t all that - the blossoming next door neighbour looked a better bet from the start.

It was hard to care about a load of white privileged kids having their fancy prom but there were enough laughs to keep me invested. Not subtle stuff you understand but when the old woman farted when getting lifted to the toilet I did smirk. I’m not proud.

The cast was largely good and I enjoyed seeing several familiar faces including Champ Kind sporting the last traces of his hair.

The values espoused were dubious at best but love won out in the end and all the bad people got humiliated in public so that’s all right then. I don’t think Ryan earned his happy ending as he was a right prick throughout but when you mix a formula you have to stick to the recipe!


Best Bit :Prom over a swimming pool - what can go wrong?    ‘W’ Rating : 15/23

No. 151 : Welcome To The Dollhouse (1995)

Welcome to the Dollhouse at the IMDb

Another slice of life now in the shape of this pretty horrible tale of a girl being bullied at school. There are a few light bits but on the whole the film will be a depressing experience for anyone who wasn’t a cool kid in the playground. Not me of course, I was well liked.

We follow a few days in the life of Dawn a 14 year old who looks a lot like Olive out of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. She has the unfortunate surname ‘Weiner’ and gets bullied for her looks and is accused of being a ‘lesbo’. Although she doesn’t react to her tormentors she does pass on the ambivalence to her younger sister in the shape of cutting up her Barbies and by calling her a ‘lesbo’.

She has a brother who is also seeking a bit of acceptance by befriending a cool kid by helping him out in class and by having him in his garage band. Her parents aren’t much use either insisting that she dismantle her gang hut so that they can have a party in the garden.

Dawn is also blossoming into womanhood and a has a younger, nerdier suitor but she’s more interested in the unobtainable Steve, who is as hot as all Steves are. In the meantime she has to make do with bully Brandon who schedules regular dates with Dawn so that he can ‘rape’ her which never gets beyond some awkward kissing. Things come to a head when Dawn, after being humiliated at her parents’ party, lets her sister get stranded and then kidnapped. With Dawn now ignored by the frantic parents she falls into a fantasy world where she saves the day, but can she save herself or at least get a date?

This was seemingly quite a successful film that won the Sundance Film Festival but I’d never heard of it before. It’s not that its low budget and independent as ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ did well from a similar starting point, but what this lacks that the former doesn’t is a big heart.

Dawn isn’t a particularly nice character and although we’re lead to believe that’s because of her maltreatment elsewhere it’s hard to care when she has troubles when we see that she’s just as bad a bully as her tormentors. The fact that she uses the same insults as are used on her show that she’s just paying it forward but it’s not exactly an endearing trait. The best scenes are those that involve wannabe rapist Brandon who’s just as big a misfit as Dawn. He too has a dysfunctional family so it’s not hard to see that it’s the home environment that’s getting the blame for this one.

It’s by no means a bad film but there isn’t that much to like and the heart warming is kept to a bare minimum. The lead girl does well in an unflattering role but we have no empathy for her despite a real grim rite of passage. The fantasy sequence towards the end was one of the few joyous moments and if the film had a few of these peppered throughout it’d have been a far more rewarding experience.

Best Bit : Dreamy Dawn Saves The Day
‘W’ Rating : 14/23