The teenage party movie. We've seen it all done before and know exactly where it's headed long before the turns ever take place, right? Reckless teenager is warned by his parents not to have too many friends over, keep the house clean, answer the phone...whatever. Said teen agrees but it's always a lie, and the party ultimately gets way out of hand. That sound about right? These movies tend to have the same message about responsibility and maturing into an adult, making the tough decisions. Nothing wrong with that. John Hughes built a career making films that almost exclusively dealt with those themes.
Project X has no such inclination, and it's all the better for it. In fact, it's almost like the anti-John Hughes film, making the occasional nod to his work while simultaneously blowing it up by glorifying sex, violence, debauchery, wanton destruction, and all in the pursuit of a little extra clout in the high school hallways. Marking the second time this year that the found footage style has been put to masterful use, marking perhaps a game changing year for the genre, the film follows Thomas Kub(Thomas Mann), a Pasadena high school senior who might as well be invisible to the popular kids. He's not overly dorky or nerdy, just amazingly average and testosterone-free. Even his father thinks he lacks spine. When his 17th birthday rolls around, and his parents roll out of town to celebrate their conveniently timed anniversary, Thomas is explicitly told not to have too many friends over. Yeah....that's not going to happen.
With the frenzied assistance of his Guido belt buddy, Costa(Oliver Cooper), who just wants to get laid like he supposedly used to back home, a party is quickly put together. But Costa is a little too good at his job, and in his efforts to ensure a party that will change their social lives forever, he unwittingly invites thousands to show up at Thomas' doorstep, creating a clusterbomb of epic proportions. We're talking a party that makes Weird Science and Can't Hardly Wait look like Sunday school.
Along with their overweight buddy, JB(Jonathan Daniel Brown), Thomas and Costa make every conceivable wrong decision during the course of the night, but it only serves to make the party bigger and more out of control. As the crowd swells into the thousands, the family dog is terrorized beyond belief, midgets turn up out of nowhere to be thrown into ovens, and bursting garden gnomes release literal treats of ecstasy. Authority figures get the proverbial and literal middle finger all night long, including the angry neighbor across the street, who isn't taking kindly to the sound of naked girls diving into the pool or the booming bass cranked out by twin DJs on the wheels of steel. Oh, and the neighborhood starts to bear a striking resemblance to a war zone. Mere words can't describe just how insane this party gets. The word "party" needs to be redefined. Even the cop are helpless against the out of control rager, stymied by a combination of Costa's legal expertise and by a barrage of incoming fire. Perhaps "war zone" is even too mild to describe it. Whatever the word, there has never been an experience quite like this on the silver screen in quite some time.
That's really what Project X is and has always had aspirations to be: a never before seen movie going experience. Piecing this monstrosity together would have been impossible if not for the perfect combination of people behind the camera, starting with producer Todd Phillips. The thread of anarchistic wish fulfillment is one he seems to have a particular fondness for, seen in both Old School and The Hangover. Debuting director Nima Nourizadeh, a music video veteran, puts that experience to perfect use in some of the film's most stirring stretches of just watching the crowd in their state of euphoria, without a care in the world. The script, which bears a little too much of a resemblance to Superbad at times, was written by Matt Drake and Michael Bacall. Bacall is having a phenomenal couple of years exploring the crazy ways in which young people think, having also written Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and the upcoming 21 Jump Street remake. An oft forgotten subplot involving Thomas and his hot best friend, Kirby(Kirby Bliss Blanton), is the one aspect that is so cliche as to be distracting.
The goal of any party movie is to put the viewer right into the thick of the mob, to experience the mayhem first hand. Few films ever actually accomplish it, because the most epic parties are a collection of perfectly aligned intangibles. A movie has to find a way to capture those things and do it in an organic way. The music, the people, the energy, just the right amount of rebellion and fear of what could happen next. Project X, for all the unbelievable antics, makes for an incredibly authentic and unforgettable experience. Too bad the high school parties in my day weren't this awesome.
Trav's Tip: Project X was inspired by the 2008 story of Corey Delaney, an Australian teen who threw a party in his backyard attended by more than 500 people who proceeded to trash the neighborhood and causing thousands of dollars of damage.
