Orlando Lens
By Nicholas Ware
Orlando, let me tell you. I've debauched. I've had nights that I've only remembered in pieces. Later, those pieces have mutated into stories, increasingly fanciful, until the telling of the night resembles a Joseph Campbell monomyth. I leave the kingdom (karaoke bar), slay the dragon (salty redneck), and marry the princess (nice girl from Ohio). I love to tell these stories. I tell them knowing that there's a unspoken pact between my audience and myself that what is being told is not history but literature. Others do the same. Nobody begrudges the small lies that become big lies that become pure entertainment. Chances are the audience for 21 & Over, the new a-night-they'll-never-forget sinfest comedy from the writers of The Hangover, will not begrudge the film its utter implausibility, its inanity, or its Three Stooges-level disregard for what constitutes a reasonable amount of punishment the human body can take. These are expected, even embraced, in stories of debauchery. What they should begrudge the film, however, is its mediocrity and complete lack of surprises.
21 & Over's primary marketing credit is its writer-directors, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, so comparisons to The Hangover are inevitable. However, part of what made The Hangover so intriguing was its willingness to go dark--every character was wholly unlikable--and its mystery structure where the audience discovers the events of the previous night along with the characters.
21 & Over, after a short set-up to which the film returns at about the one-hour mark, follows a traditional narrative structure, setting up hi-jink to lead to hi-jink, recurring characters in new locations, and building to a climax in which each of the three gruel-bland "heroes" of the film recognize a flaw in their character and take steps to correct it. In other words, it's pretty much the same film as Road Trip, Euro Trip, Miss March, The Sitter, Sex Drive, or any other ten-dozen teen-oriented comedies of varying quality from the last twenty years. Nothing outside of some particularly crude gags will surprise an educated cinemaphile, and 21 & Over's surprises lead to groans far more often than laughs.
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| Miller (Miles Teller), Jeff Chang (Justin Chon), and Casey (Skyler Astin) experience a night they'll never forget that you'll soon forget. |
He's joined by Miles Teller and Justin Chon (the irresponsible one and the stressed one), neither of whom stands out nor drops the ball. This is both the strength of 21 & Over and its unforgivable weakness: it is not bad or amateurish enough to actively hate but certainly not good or interesting enough to recommend. The screening I attended had a gaggle of 18-20-year-olds who seemed to enjoy the film in a way that only those who haven't yet had their own adventures can. However, I can't imagine any of the young people, even the ones with the most questionable taste profiles, breaking out a Blu Ray of 21 & Over in five years to show their work friends this "classic" comedy. Rather, I expect a 2018 where used dollar-bin copies of the film flood remainder stores.
21 & Over is both the fiction and the reality of the debauched night story. It is a lot of bluster, layers of exaggeration, and ultimately never quite as interesting as the teller imagines it to be. It will eventually be replaced by other stories with more veracity or more depth, until it becomes a shadow of an echo. The difference between 21 & Over and the stories you hear from your friends is that you care about your friends, despite their dumb stories. You might even love them more for their dumb stories. Those stories are part of a person's fabric; they mean a little bit of something. 21 & Over is a little bit of nothing, and nothing is no thing needed here.
21 & Over opens Friday, March 1st at all major first-run multiplexes in the Orlando area. Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, some graphic nudity, drugs, and drinking. Run time 1 hour 33 minutes.
