Miss March
Posted on March 12, 2009 at 9:31 pm
FLowest Recommended Age: | Adult |
MPAA Rating: | Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, pervasive language and some drug use |
Profanity: | Extremely strong and crude language |
Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking including drinking to deal with stress, smoking, drug use |
Violence/ Scariness: | Comic violence, some graphic images |
Diversity Issues: | Offensive to every possible group |
Date Released to Theaters: | March 13, 2009 |
A smarmy premise becomes an unspeakably offensive movie in a mess that is not just disgusting but dull. I don’t feel I need a bath after seeing it; I feel I need an exorcism.
Remember the song “Centerfold?” That’s pretty much the idea, but much coarser. On prom night, abstinence lecturers Eugene (Zach Cregger) and his girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) are about to have sex when he opens the wrong door and falls down the basement stairs. Four years later, he awakes from a coma when his lifetime best friend, the smarmy, juvenile Tucker (Trevor Moore) smacks him on the head with a baseball bat. He tells Eugene that not only did he miss having sex with Cindi and four years of his life but Cindi is now a centerfold in Playboy, Miss March. They decide to to to a party at the Playboy Mansion so Eugene can be reunited with Cindi despite Eugene’s muscular atrophy and a complete lack of money, much less an invitation, plus being on the other side of the country. This plan has the added advantage of getting Tucker out of town and away from his revenge-seeking epileptic girlfriend, whose fire fighter brother has alerted firehouses across the country that Tucker must be killed. She is angry because he repeatedly stabbed her face with a fork when she had a seizure during a sex act. No kidding.
This film has been inflicted on audiences by director/writer/stars the guys behind the television show The Whitest Kids U’Know. The term “triple threat” has never been so meaningful. They are also all about 10-15 years too old for their characters. Unfunny, offensive jokes are repeated as though that might make them hilarious. Over and over we get to experience Eugene’s post-coma lack of bowel control and a rapper whose name describes an animal’s body part. That sets the tone for the rest of the film. Offensive portrayals of women, Hispanics, African-Americans, lesbians, fire fighters(!), the disabled, and pretty much the entire human race are brain-numbingly off-key, never audacious or clever, just thuggish and sluggish. The only impressive aspect of the movie is how many ways it manages to be insulting and how few ways it manages to be entertaining.
Parents should know that this movie is offensive in every possible category — racist, sexist, homophobic, insulting to the disabled, to fire fighters, and to sentient life forms everywhere. The film includes drinking (including drinking to deal with stress), smoking, and drug use, very strong language, very explicit sexual references and situations, and comic violence, some graphic.
Topics for discussion: Why did Eugene and Tucker have different ideas about sex?
If you like this, try: better films like “Superbad.”
What you wrote in the first two sentences absolutely confirms the queasiness I felt each time I saw the commercial. Movie Mom, you’re the best!
Thanks, FB! Your comment almost makes up for my having to sit through the film!
I tell ya, there just aren’t that many good comedy films anymore. The genre is dying a slow and horrible death and worse, nobody seems to care. Films like this one are successful despite their awfulness and it makes you wonder what kind of person can possibly think this is as good as Animal House or Ghostbusters. Tropic Thunder was good, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s very sad.