Author: Robert Greenberger

Growing up, I went to plenty of parties, but never one when the parents were out of town. I always felt I missed out on something until I heard the time my younger cousin held such an affair, resulting in $1500 in property damage (in 1980 dollars). Call me uptight or a loser, much as Thomas (Thomas Mann), is in Project X.

Designed to be the ultimate party film, it was based on the recollections of various people who attended outrageous parties while parents were out of town. Cobbling the stories together, Michael Bacall and Matt Drake wrote a script and director Nima Nourizadeh sought out relative unknowns and total unknowns to populate the cast, giving it a fresh feel. Eight different camera systems were used including the main images purportedly shot by an AV studio Dax (Dax Flame) and cell phones given to various extras, who shot moments without others realizing it.

The $12 million film has more than made its money back while inspiring several aborted attempts at recreating the ultimate blowout for real. Coming to home video Tuesday, the Combo Pack contains seven more minutes of raunch in an extended cut along with the featurettes “Tallying up the Damage” and “Project X: Declassified”.

The basic problem with the film is that everything is amped up to the point of ridiculousness, without being grounded in any reality. While some have compared this with the 1970’s Animal House and 1980’s Risky Business, they have missed the point. Those films featured brilliant casting, terrific directing and a rhythm that allowed the really outrageous stuff to occur. This terrible film avoids any pretense.

It also is missing any sense of originality. We’ve seen it all before. Thomas is a loser, his parents are going out of town and tell him they know he’ll have people over regardless of what they say so Dad asks that they be kept out of his office and not to touch his car (telling you immediately that is exactly what will happen). Costa (Oliver Cooper) and J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown) decide to turn the party into a birthday bash that will turn all three losers into heroes. The word spreads and people come by foot, car, and bus. Dozens becomes hundreds become thousands. Neighbors call the police, who somehow miss several hundred people in the backyard, and the party escalates out of control until the SWAT team is called in but by then so has the flame-throwing-toting drug dealer. Really.

The footage shows plenty of topless girls, drinking, dancing, and general partymaking. What’s missing is anyone to root for. Everyone attending the party is unlikeable save for the predictable love interest Kirby (Kirby Bliss Blanton). The film also lacks a set piece, the one truly original and memorable moment that gets people talking and makes the film immortal. This is just a wasted opportunity without any merit whatsoever.

BURBANK, Calif. (June 11, 2012) – Walt Disney Animation Studios presents an epic tale of adventure and comedy in “Frozen,” a computer-animated feature film slated for the big screen in November 2013. Directed by Chris Buck (Tarzan, Surf’s Up) and produced by Peter Del Vecho (Winnie the Pooh, The Princess and the Frog), Frozen features the vocal talents of film/TV/stage star Kristen Bell as Anna, a young dreamer about to take the adventure of a lifetime, and Tony Award ®-winning actress Idina Menzel as Elsa the Snow Queen. The movie will feature original songs by Broadway greats Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

In Frozen, a prophecy traps a kingdom in eternal winter, so Anna (voice of Bell) must team up with Kristoff, a daring mountain man, on the grandest of journeys to find the Snow Queen (voice of Menzel) and put an end to the icy spell. Encountering Everest-like extremes, mystical creatures and magic at every turn, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom from destruction.

Bell has starred in a variety of films, including the comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Couples Retreat, and the upcoming films Hit & Run, Some Girls and the Farrelly Brothers’ Movie 43. On the small screen, Bell is currently starring in the Showtime series House of Lies alongside Don Cheadle; she has also starred in Heroes and Veronica Mars. Broadway credits include The Crucible and Tom Sawyer.

Menzel, who won a Tony Award® as Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Elphaba in Broadway’s Wicked (2004), landed her first role on Broadway in 1995 in the Tony Award-winning musical Rent. Film credits include Enchanted and the feature film Rent. She has appeared in a recurring role on TV’s Glee and recently released Idina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Symphony, a live concert with an orchestra led by composer/conductor Marvin Hamlisch. Menzel is currently on a North American concert tour.

Robert Lopez is a three-time Tony Award®-winning writer of the Tony and Grammy® Award-winning musical The Book of Mormon, which was co-written with Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), and the musical Avenue Q, which ran for six years on Broadway and four years in London’s West End.  Lopez teamed with wife Anderson-Lopez, whose Drama Desk-winning show In Transit is Broadway-bound, to write original songs for 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, a stage version of Finding Nemo and a new musical called Up Here.

I thought it was funnier. Meatballs looms large in the memory as Bill Murray’s first big film and a laugh riot along the lines of Caddyshack. It certainly has the right pedigree as it came from director Ivan Reitman and was co-written by Harold Ramis. The film was a hit when first released in 1979 and spawned several sequels and now it is making its Blu-ray debut on Tuesday from Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

It has not aged well. The humor is mild, even for 1979, when Animal House rewrote the rules a year earlier. This PG-rated comedy features the counselors and kids at Camp North Star, a ramshackle summer camp. Despite a reporter telling us the camp charges $1000 a week, we have no idea where the money goes given the dilapidated bunks, grounds, and facilities. The kids aren’t required to wear camp uniforms and they don’t seem to be following much of a schedule.

Written by Ramis, Len Blum, Dan Goldberg, and Janis Allen, the characters aren’t well-defined archetypes or satirical portraits of the kind of people you would find at such a place. We have no clue about the kids and their backgrounds, or the counselors and counselors in training (CITs). It doesn’t appear to be a very large camp given each age range is represented by about four people each.

When I went to sleepaway camp in the early 1970s there were plenty of things to ridicule and mock and the film barely touches on any of them making it an empty and disappointing exercise that most certainly does not hold up well on repeat viewing.  Murray stars as the head counselor, Tripper Harrison, who meanders from activity to activity, with glimpses of the character that would grow up to become the star of Stripes, a far better collaboration with Ramis and Reitman a mere three years later.

There’s a sentimental storyline as he befriends Rudy Gerner (Chris Makepeace) the kid who has no friends and self-esteem issues. Of course, he goes jogging with Murray every day so when the big competition with another camp requires a marathon runner, you know who will race and who will win.  The story includes several teen crushes and romances which are more cloyingly sweet than laugh-filled raunch.

Of the No Name cast, Makepeace went on to a short-lived teen heartthrob career while Murray took the money and ran back to Saturday Night Live. The rest never aspired to much with the exception of Matt Craven, who now stars on NCIS.

The film’s grainy low-budget feel is retained in the Blu-ray transfer and doesn’t look much better on high definition. The sound is nice and Elmer Bernstein’s score is a welcome touch. Unlike the most recent DVD release, the 2007 special edition, the only bonus track we get here is the original commentary from Reitman and Goldberg. Now, if you’ve never heard this before, it’s worth a listen to understand that Murray’s participation was never confirmed until he arrived for work and an hour of sub-plots were jettisoned to make room for the Murray/Makepeace sub-plot. It was shot fast and the haphazard feel robs the film of any strength it could have possessed.

Overall, the movie itself and the Blu-ray release are remarkably disappointing.