“Extreme Movie: Unrated” DVD Review
In the land of absolute crap movies, the … Movie titles reign supreme. While the original group that worked on Scary Movie has split into two factions, one making films for Fox that are all but guaranteed to lower your IQ, and another that has been working for Genius/Dimension and has released such films as Superhero Movie and…well, Extreme Movie. There is a very clear distinction between the two camps, as the Fox films are almost always utter and complete trash, whereas the Dimension productions at least have some redeemable quality. Unfortunately for Extreme Movie, an apparently DTV affair as it received no US release at all, a bit of the Fox camps way of writing seems to have crept into this one.
A hilarious and outrageous sketch comedy following a group of teenagers that get into a series of sexual misadventures, with both the joys and embarrassments of teen sex, but mostly the embarrassments. Frankie Muniz stars as a teen who loses his virginity with his girlfriend, only to find she wants to take things much, much further. Ryan Pinkston plays an average high school student who falls for the cutest girl in his class but finds he’s looking for love in all the wrong places. Jamie Kennedy plays a young man facing the aftermath of a crazy night of partying, and Michael Cera’s character meets a girl online and goes to her home for a night of sex games, only to realize that he went to the wrong apartment.
So, I’ll admit I enjoyed Superhero Movie. It was pretty stupid for the most part, but it had its moments (mostly provided by Leslie Neilson) and I was genuinely intrigued by Extreme Movie if only due to Michael Cera. “Surely,” I thought to myself, “Cera wouldn’t commit himself to something that was complete crap.” Well to be fair his sequence is moderately entertaining and far from the worst “sketch” in the film, but all together this is really just a piss poor film. The laughs are very few and aside from gratuitous shots of replicated genitalia and an abundance of the usual sex jokes, Extreme Movie is just one giant cliché after another.
What hurts the film most is it’s…well, it’s almost like that Onion movie that came out awhile back. A bunch of random skits that are loosely connected to one another with a very thin plotline that eventually resolves itself in the end. In-between these segments is a whole myriad of oddities, such as Matthew Lillard’s PSAs and a big mixture of unfunny and generally time wasting material. At seventy-five minutes I still felt this film ran too long, as the jokes either worked or fell flat on their face and for the ones that fell, they seemed to last way longer than the jokes that did work.
For those who grew up with the American Pie generation, this film is basically just a collection of dirty jokes revolving around high school students and their fixation and determination to have sex. There’s all the usual jokes and, admittedly, some entertaining sex ed sequences, but when you get down to it there just isn’t enough original material here to make it worthwhile. I highly doubt anyone could truly enjoy this movie unless they were able to regress to their 14 year old self. Or…you know, actually be 14, in which case this movie is just a filthy mess and shouldn’t really be viewed by anyone under 17. It’s one of those films that’s too stupid for the people that can see it and too adult for the people that want to see it.
I truly wanted to enjoy this movie, which is why I was so disappointed with it. I knew it wasn’t going to be comedic gold, but with Munez and Cera (the two individuals most touted on the cover and yet we see each of them only once) headlining I’d hoped for a tad bit more. Sadly all we ended up with was a more vulgar and less subtle variety of SNL skits that really failed to deliver most of the time. There’s about a 90-to-10 ration of unfunny-to-funny material here, so unless you have a high tolerance for stupid, Skip this one.
The DVD
Genius brings this film to DVD with perhaps the worst cover known to man. I hate to use the term “Photoshopped” because that’s not actually accurate (I think Adobe even released a statement once as to how to properly refer to images that appeared poorly altered, but I’m much too lazy to look it up right now), but man…Michael Cera looks like a painting of himself on that cover. The rest of the cast looks awkward as well, with Lillard looking fresh off the red carpet and…well, everyone else is really not too bad looking, but it looks like crap regardless. In an attempt to spice up the packaging, the flap opens to reveal tidbits about the individual characters in the film in a “year book” style setting, with the (cover your eyes if you’re under 17 and reading this) “blue ball” muppet from the film denoted as “Most Likely to Be Fisted.” Now I’m not sure where this DVD is going to be sold exactly, but if I hear a 12 year old ask their parents what being “fisted” means because they read it on a package, then this useless film may just have been worth it. Inside the standard amaray case is just the single disc, with the most boring and plane disc label I’ve ever seen: a big red Dimension Extreme bar across the top, a white background and the films logo. Exciting!
Video and audio for this film is what you’d expect from a modern production; no signs of compression, no signs of artifacting and no signs of anything entertaining. It’s a by-the-numbers release, with the dialogue driven soundtrack staying contained in the front channels and very little escaping to the surrounds (there may have been a bit of a sheep in the rear channels at one point, but I’m not sure).
Extras include a Commentary with co-directors Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson, which really is…just kind of embarrassing to listen to. Then there’s the Making Of that touts that the extras are where we’ll see everything not included in the film, and yet…those are the only two extras. The making-of is barely over eight and a half minutes and the commentary is about as entertaining as the film itself.
Obviously this is something you should Skip as well. I had higher hopes for the film due to the talent involved, but it just ended up being a disappointment. Oh well. There’s always next time (and with these … Movie, you can bet your ass there will be a whole load more).
Extreme Movie arrives on DVD on February 24th.