With its surprisingly strong debut last month, Chronicle proved that the found-footage format could entertain beyond the horror genre, so it wasn’t all that surprising when filmmakers decided to expand the shooting style to the comedy realm. High school parties are by no means a new setting in comedies, but very few films have the audacity to focus exclusively on the party itself, my personal favorite being 1998’s Can’t Hardly Wait. Enter Project X, the newest comedy featuring teens behaving badly that was the brainchild of the minds that brought audiences The Hangover and was being described as “Superbad on crack.” Needless to say, I am sure that the interests of countless members of the teen demographic were piqued, while the guerrilla-style marketing efforts that compiled test audience reactions through Twitter kept buzz going strong. Early critical reaction was surprisingly negative, but c’mon, a raunchy and wild teen party devolving into mayhem…laughs shouldn’t be too hard to come by, and really, how bad could it be?
Wow, awful in almost every way imaginable, Project X throws all logic and coherent story development out the window in favor of showcasing putrid behavior carried out by thoroughly unlikable and completely irredeemable characters. Don’t get me wrong, teens behaving badly is nothing new, but in each of those past examples, there were mitigating factors or personality quirks that allowed the audience to sympathize…in Project X, I actually prayed that the parents would return and kill their children. One character in particular, Costa, may be the single most vile human being in cinema; it takes him all of five seconds into the film to alienate any supporters, and he screws over his “friends” so completely that I’m surprised it isn’t illegal. In terms of the aftermath that follows the party, the script is not only unbelievable, it is downright insulting and surprisingly irresponsible. The sole redeeming factor is that the party did look like fun and there were plenty of attractive “teens” to provide eye candy, but those facts do not excuse the poor writing, forced humor, and shocking lack of heart or emotion that make Project X an early heavyweight contender for worst film of 2012, you know, at least until Adam Sandler returns to the big screen.
Overall Recommendation: Very Low
