College

College (2008)

5% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 39 reviews)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Deb Hagan

Starring: Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell, Kevin Covais, Haley Bennett

From: MGM

Now that I have time to do one of these, I’ll talk about a movie I saw last fall on the big screen and again on DVD a few months later (as I’m a masochist), and boy is it a turkey. I know, I know… I can see why MGM may end up going bankrupt if one of the few movies they put out the last few years was stuff as bad as this.

This was a movie that was advertised decently on channels like ESPN August of last year, so I was surprised that it did real poorly at the box office. I decided to see it on the Tuesday afternoon after it was released. Then I saw it was for good reason why it tanked at the box office; sure, I heard before I saw it that it was no good, but that’s certainly the case.

This flick is about a trio of high school seniors who visit a college and they spend a weekend there. There’s the nerdy lead, a fat crass sidekick, and a major nerd who gets picked on by the fat guy. They are no Seth, Evan, and especially not McLovin’. Now, some of the advertising was it saying that it was the ultimate movie about college, or some such nonsense. That was NOT the case, and in fact it rather blatantly ripped off of movies like Superbad and some others… in fact, let me copy and paste from a MySpace blog I wrote at the time:

I could mention a few things as to the start of September, but the only interesting thing I'll bring up now is some movie advice. I'm sure that last week many of you saw ads for College, the ridiculously generically titled movie that is just another raunchy comedy. I still went and saw it as hey, it sounded interesting, and it managed to bomb big time at the box office, coming in at FIFTEENTH place after Monday's tallies were counted up for the three days. I doubt MGM spend all that advertising money to have it not come close to making the top 10. I mean, ouch. Sure, Hamlet 2 is an even bigger bomb, but ever since I saw an ad for it way back in April I thought it looked like horseshit, so I'm amused it tanked so badly.

College, though, is pretty wretched. I'm glad I only paid matinee prices to see it. It's like a low-budget ripoff of movies such as Superbad (or any other Apatow film) and Revenge of the Nerds. There were pretty blatant ripoffs of both movies (among other "homage's"), such as camera shots (and the three main guys… blatant copies of McLovin, Seth, and Evan) and a raid on a frat house that was such a steal from Nerds, they played an imitation "Mission Impossible" theme as if they went out of their way to remind people that in Nerds, the original theme to the 60's show played when the Tri Lambs (oh yeah, and they was even a reference to "The Lamda's" in College; honestly!) raided the Pi's sorority house.

Besides that, the real problem is the script. They made the character not likeable at all. Not McLovin, Not Seth, and Not Evan (that might as well be their names) are people you don't really care for and don't want to get behind and support. You know, the way they acted and how they took all that abuse from the Not Alpha Beta's when they didn't have to take it… the movie was about seeing the abuse that the dorks took in gross fashion rather than trying to be funny. I only was amused (much less laughed) at a few moments, and that was it. Not even the appearance of Verne Troyer as himself-yes, really-and the appearance of many bare boobies made things any better. So yeah, EPIC FAIL (despite the presence of the cute girls that were part of the Not Pi sorority), and what a disappointment.

While I do realize it was a Tuesday afternoon in an Orlando theater that is not the most popular, I was still surprised I was the only person in the theatre.

After seeing it again on DVD, I never want to watch it again; the unrated version does nothing to help it out. Like I said, the main problem is the script, not the actors; the lead girls were cute, which is always nice, but you hated how the characters were written, as the situation they were put in where they “had” to take a ridiculous amount of abuse from the Not Alpha Beta frat… and it was mainly because they wanted to be accepted by those loathsome characters, and then later it was because they thought that the chicks they were hooked up with would suddenly hate them because they’re still in high school… which actually does happen at first and then suddenly things are fine again. Of course. Even the ending sequence where the bad guys get their comeuppance isn’t entertaining; rather, I was left wondering how they were able to do all that in such a short amount of time. So yeah, never watch this (not even if you’re a horny guy and want to see a bunch of nudity, as you can just do the same on the Internet) and stick to the movies that they emulated instead.

I'll be back by this time next week with at least one new review.