"Project X" Review

"Found footage" is the movie genre where we're supposed to believe what we're watching is basically a documentary. The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, the Paranormal Activity series and Chronicle are but a few and Project X (no relation to the 1980s Matthew Broderick chimp flick) is yet another thing we're supposed to extra-suspend our disbelief about so we can imagine it really happened, man. Really!

Ted Kub is a high school loser who never made it with a lady whose folks are leaving town to celebrate their anniversary, leaving him home alone with his mouthy friend, Costa, and shlubby pal J.B. to celebrate his birthday. His dad says he can have a few friends over. Costa invites the world, it seems. What do you think happens?

Hint: They wouldn't be putting out a movie of a quiet gathering of pizza and Pictionary, now would they.

As the trailer below pretty much spoils the best bits for, it rapidly gets waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of hand and mayhem ensues. (It's too bad that the soundtrack is totally geared toward hip-hop and dance tracks because the B-52's "Party Out of Bounds" would've been swell.) There's booze, fighting, booze, destruction, booze, fire, booze, drugs, booze, a bouncy house, booze, and bouncing boobies. (I think there'd be fewer uptight emo brats shooting up their schools if they got to see some joy globes in their movies like I did growing up in the Eighties when "teen movie" meant "boobies will be displayed" instead of being forced to use the Internet and ending up on some cutting message boards.) They should've had a counter in the corner of the screen tallying the damage down to property as we go along.

They barely use the conventions of "found footage" as almost the whole movie is shot from the perspective of a creepy AV nerd named Dax, so I don't know why they didn't just shoot it as a straight movie. There are some echoes of Risky Business (ask your parents) around the edges and while there aren't any BIG surprises (the spoilerific trailer notwithstanding), there's enough frivolous mayhem to make Project X worth dropping by for a couple of drinks with.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.