21 and Over

Director: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Stars: Miles Teller, Skylar Astin, Justin Chon

Plot: On the eve of his 21^st birthday, Jeff Chang is preparing for an early night before an interview for med school the following morning in order to make his father proud. Unfortunately for him, his old school friends show up and have other ideas...

Hughs View:

Redeeming features.

There are many things wrong with 21 and Over. Many, many things. What it really boils down to though is the idea of redeeming features, or in this case, the lack there of.

It is hard to review this film without sounding like a boring old man. I am at the very least a boring, 25 year old man. I also wan't to point out at this point that I am a fan of this style of film. It nails its colours to the mast from a very early stage. This film is going to be bawdy, it is going to be risque, it is going to be profane, it is going to be debauched. That is fine. You can look back to Animal House in the 70s or for a more generationally applicable references, American Pie, Road Trip and The Hangover (a film that was written by the writer/directors of this piece). Films about guys wanting to have fun and get wasted are not a new thing and, when done well, can be a lot of fun.

This film is not done well.

Now let me get this out of the way, I do not dislike Miles Teller and Skylar Astin. I have liked them both in previous films and genuinely believe they have big futures ahead of them. They can not save this film though.

You could criticise it for being crass without redemptive virtue. The vomiting, urination and abundant swearing in place of real dialogue all feel completely misused and really don't help matters. All the Jackass films had these elements in higher quantities though and were still far superior. You could criticise it for being casually racist. The use of and reference to racial stereotypes seem remarkably misjudged but the Harold and Kumar films proved that this could be used to humorous effect. You could also criticise it for not being funny but I guess humour is technically subjective. I know a lot of people laughed a lot at Pitch Perfect, a film which went right over my head, but I am still aware it was better than this.

What it really comes down to is that all the main characters are completely unlikeable. Completely. Sure American Pie proved with the character of Stiffler that a character can be unlikeable and still win over an audience but that is missing two crucial points. Firstly, Stiffler was only one out of a whole group of otherwise pleasant individuals. Secondly, he had redeeming features. None of these characters have anything close. They are unpleasant to each other and to those around them. They have nothing funny to say, they have nothing endearing to do, their actions, even whilst seemingly supporting each other, are clearly self serving and you can not help but want them to fail. Which is not the films aim.

You can not even give the film makers credit for trying. I mentioned earlier the pantheon of films in the sub-genre that 21 and Over aspires to, well you can pick pretty much any one of them and find in this something that has been ripped off from it. The opening showing our two protagonists in a state of disrepair from the previous nights misadventures before flashing back to the day before is obviously in the vein of The Hangover but that is allowable due to it sharing the same writers. The rest of it lazy, brazen and verging on plagiaristic. There are too many examples to name here, suffice to say if you do ever suffer the misfortune of sitting through it, try counting the better films it makes you think of because doing that is better than actually trying to engage in the film itself.

Overall you can accuse this film of many crimes and the odds are those accusations would be well founded. Ultimately the greatest crime it commits is that of bad film making. Obviously it is not easy to make a good film in any genre, otherwise everyone would be doing it. The fact is though you can see from the work they have done before, from the fact that their stars are indeed stars in the making and from the films they are aspiring to imitate, the people making this film knew what they were doing. They just did a lazy job and now want you to pay for it, which in my view is unforgivable.

Also Watch: Superbad. You can pick any number of films of this type and have a better time than in 21 and Over but for my choice if you want to see the story of three flawed but crucially loveable characters try to make the best of a crazy night when things go mad around them, Superbad is one of the best. It is also gut-bustingly hilarious which helps.