In the United States, it’s not unusual to find great food in tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurants. There’s some incredible barbecue served out of tiny shacks, and some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten have come from a small gas station. But Jiro Ono has taken this to another level. He’s created a world-class sushi restaurant in a small shop right next to the bathroom in a Tokyo subway station.

At 85 years old, Jiro is the oldest chef ever to receive the highest culinary rating of three Michelin stars, and he’s also the first sushi chef to receive that honor. His restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, only has ten seats, and you have to book your reservation a month in advance. But because service is fast-paced, and because you should eat the sushi immediately as soon as it’s presented for the best possible flavor, it’s not unusual for your $350+ meal to last only 15 minutes. They only serve sushi, so you shouldn’t go there if you want a variety of food or relaxed conversation, but if you go there for the sushi, then you’ll probably not walk away disappointed.

There’s nothing particularly magical about the way that Jiro is able to create this incredible food. He uses techniques that are fairly well known and the best ingredients he can find, but it’s his experience and dedication to quality that makes all the difference. He started as a sushi chef’s apprentice at age ten, and has been in the business of making sushi for three quarters of a century. Jiro’s routine hasn’t changed much in decades (although he now lets his eldest son Yoshikazu go to the fish market ever since Jiro’s heart attack at age 70), and he’s still up before dawn and stays at it until well after dark every night. Yoshikazu will take over in his father’s footsteps when Jiro is no longer able to run the business, but the way things are going now, that may still be several years away.

This is a fascinating documentary that is mostly as simple and minimalist as the sushi and the chefs that it features. You’re not going to find impressive graphics or animation, nor will you be bombarded with statistics or mountains of data. You’ll see men who love what they do and have worked hard to get where they are, and yet are still not satisfied with whatever level of success and notoriety they have achieved.

If there is a flaw in the documentary, it is that even with a short runtime of only 81 minutes, it doesn’t always stay as focused as it should. There’s an unusually long segment during which we’re simply watching men working at a fish market without any interaction from Jiro or Yoshikazu, and later in the film we take a trip with Jiro to his hometown in which nothing happens that’s really got any relation to food or the restaurant. While the purpose of this trip is likely to help humanize Jiro, that’s not something that’s even remotely necessary because he already comes off as one of the most genuine and firmly-grounded people you can imagine, in addition to being an upbeat and completely adorable perfectionist. While his skill may put him at the very top of the elites in the sushi world, his personality probably also ranks him among the top in terms of relatability and likeability.

I often imagine myself as a better writer than I really am. It’s often a case of me simply not proofreading what I write, because when I read it in my head, I often “hear” things that don’t flow well or encounter stupid mistakes. If I were to spend more time reading what I write before posting it, then I’d probably come off sounding a lot better, but even still I wouldn’t be surprised if I overestimate myself at least some of the time.

But Jonathan Flynn (played by Robert De Niro) does not have any doubts at all about his writing abilities. He’s quite certain that he’s one of the greatest writers in American history. He’s never had anything published, but he once got a very encouraging rejection letter that said he just wasn’t right for their audience, which is clearly more a reflection on the publisher than on his skill. But until some publisher wakes up and realizes what they’re missing, Jonathan is stuck behind the wheel of a cab. He may have some issues with racism and some of his customers are a little intimidated by the nail-spiked baseball bat he carries as a weapon, but it’s steady income. And after a somewhat threatening dispute with his inconsiderate landlord, Jonathan’s cab also becomes his home. Of course, a taxi doesn’t make for the most comfortable lodging, so he’s tired all the time and when he falls asleep at the wheel, he gets into an accident that ultimately leads to him losing his license and his job and his home.

Jonathan also wasn’t going to win any awards for great parenting. He abandoned his wife Jody (Julianne Moore) and son Nick (Paul Dano) 18 years ago, and although he wrote letters occasionally (sometimes from jail), they basically lived their lives without him. But after his mom committed suicide, Nick found himself kind of wandering aimlessly through life. He had a little money so that he didn’t have to work, but he felt that he needed some kind of direction. When a friend suggested that he come work for a nearby homeless shelter, he took them up on it and found it suited him well. His work required him to interact with all kinds of people with all kinds of physical and mental conditions, so he quickly became adept at dealing with whatever might pop up. But he wasn’t really prepared to see his father show up one night as a guest at the shelter.

I knew the kind of subject matter that Being Flynn dealt with going into the movie, so I was prepared for something of a downer, but I really wasn’t ready for just how dark things get in this film. There is occasional humor, but even that is generally something that provides amusement but doesn’t really lighten the mood. And where the father’s behavior could be at least partially explained by mental illness, it is the frustration of the obviously-bad choices made by the ostensibly sane son that I think really did me in.

But despite its effect on my overall mood, I was a little disappointed with the content. It moves pretty slowly in the middle, taking more time than necessary to show the that both Jonathan and Nick were facing, and although it was an important element in Nick’s life, I think that the film spends too much time on his relationship with his mother at various points in his life. But it’s the end of the film that really feels out of place to me. It had such an abrupt change in tone that I was left kind wondering what happened, and because it also felt unearned I found myself kind of numbed to the emotional impact the film had over me to that point. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I got to follow this movie with three great comedies I’d already seen before so that I wasn’t stuck in a funk for the rest of the day.

I never got into the Harry Potter phenomenon, either by reading the books or watching the movies. I never read any of the Twilight books, and only saw two of the movies when they were being made fun of by Austin’s Master Pancake Theater comedy troupe. And even though I saw all of the Lord of the Rings films, I didn’t really find them particularly enjoyable. But I can’t deny that I’ve read all three of the books in The Hunger Games series, or that I went to the first film’s midnight opening (along with virtually every teenage girl in the city). Unfortunately, although I went in with cautious optimism, I left with a little disappointment.

About seventy-five years ago, the nation of Panem was divided into thirteen districts and a capital city. But when the districts rebelled against the capital, a nasty war broke out and when the dust cleared the capital emerged the victor. District 13 had been completely destroyed, and the remaining twelve were subject to even greater hardship than they had known in the past. Most people are just barely able to scrape by, and it’s driven young Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence) to supplement her family’s meager rations by venturing out into the forbidden territory beyond her District 12 border to engage in illegal hunting.

As a reminder of and punishment for their insolence, each year the capital puts on a brutal sporting event they call The Hunger Games. Each of the districts is required to supply one boy and one girl to be placed into a dangerous arena filled with all kinds of nasty creatures and deadly traps, and they are compelled to fight to the death using capital-supplied weapons and their own strength and ingenuity. These “tributes” are usually selected at a raffle called The Reaping, but when her sister Prim’s name was called, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) was the boy who was chosen, and because no one offered to take his place, he would be accompanying Katniss to the capital before being sent into battle.

It would be difficult for any film to live up to the anticipation generated around The Hunger Games, but certainly this one could have made a better attempt than it did. Since it’s based on a novel targeted toward the young adult audience (although I know many not-so-young adults who’ve also read it), it makes sense that the film has a PG-13 rating, but it’s also unfortunate because it means that the time spent in the arena is much less satisfying than it could have been, and it never approaches the brutality contained in the R-rated Japanese kids-killing-kids-in-an-arena movie Battle Royale. But surprisingly, it also really plays down the romantic aspects of the time Katniss and Peeta spent in the arena, and I’d expect the teen girls would’ve eaten that up.

The disappointment of what happens in the arena is matched by what happens before that. The film is just over 140 minutes long, but we don’t even see the arena until 70 minutes in, and that creates some serious pacing problems. If you’ve read the book, then you’ll find that you’re spending most of your time waiting for what you already know is coming, and then when it arrives, it’s not quite as good as you’d imagined it. The camera operator for the opening scenes in District 12 apparently suffers from some kind of neurological disorder because they couldn’t have been any shakier if they’d been filmed from aboard a small boat on rough seas. Fortunately, they managed to find a steadicam about the time that contestants boarded the train for the capital, so we don’t have to watch the whole movie that way, but if you’re susceptible to motion sickness, then some Dramamine might be a good precautionary measure.

There are plenty of other problems with the movie. There are a lot of times in which they deviate from the book for no good reason and without making any improvement to the source material (e.g., the explanation of how Katniss got the mockingjay pin). There are also elements of the story that you’ll understand if you’ve read the books, but that are kind of left unexplored in the film adaptation. Even something as basic as the name of one of the significant characters in the first half (Effie Trinket, as portrayed by Elizabeth Banks) is completely omitted. The climax isn’t nearly as climactic in the movie as the book, and many elements are much better left to the imagination than to have them shown to you.

If you saw and enjoyed The Hunger Games movie before reading the book, then the book will probably make it even better for you. On the other hand, if you’ve got the book fresh in your mind, then you might be better off skipping the film because it’s just not going to live up to what you imagined for yourself. And if you want more gore and less teen angst, then check out Battle Royale.

For some reason, dreaming kind of freaks me out. I don’t often remember my dreams, but when I do it’s often because I was abruptly woken in the middle of them, and a lot of the time when that happens there’s a brief period of confusion in which I’m not sure what’s real and what was dreamed. On more than one occasion by the time that I’m fully conscious and aware of my surroundings, I’ve found myself out of bed and reacting to something that wasn’t there. The idea that something like this could happen while completely unconscious, and potentially without even any memory of it, is something that I find completely terrifying. And this movie didn’t help me with that fear.

Matt (played by Mike Birbiglia, who also wrote and directed the movie) badly wants to be a stand-up comedian, but so far he’s only managed to get a job as a bartender at a comedy club where he occasionally gets to do a couple of minutes between the real comedians. The couple of times that he’s had any kind of real shot at a brief routine, he’s bombed pretty spectacularly. His father Frank (James Rebhorn) has no confidence in his abilities and is openly hostile about the way he’s throwing away his life, and his mother Linda (Carol Kane) is mainly concerned about when he’s going to marry his longtime girlfriend Abby (Lauren Ambrose) and give her some grandchildren. Abby is about the only one who’s completely behind Matt, but she shares some of Linda’s concerns about their future.

All of this uncertainty about his future creates a bit of tension in Matt, and one night it manifests itself in the form of him acting out a dream. It was fairly benign, with him thinking that the clothes hamper was a jackal, and everyone had a good laugh about it. But when it happened a second time, with him believing he’d won an Olympic medal and then falling off the “award podium”, people started to get concerned and suggest that he go see a doctor. But Matt shrugged it off, hoping that his now burgeoning success would eliminate the tension causing this unusual nighttime behavior.

Sleepwalk with Me is one of those movies that is a joy to watch even when it’s depicting things that aren’t so pleasant. It’s got a lot of great dry humor, including a brief scene with Marc Maron and a frustratingly-short segment in which we hear Mitch Hedberg on the television, and even when the jokes are biting and create an ominous glimpse at unpleasantness to come, you’re still completely on board. Most films portraying characters making obviously-bad choices reach a point at which they become frustrating to watch, but somehow this movie finds a way to avoid that.

It’s a pretty short movie, but it progresses slowly enough that it doesn’t seem to fly by. On the other hand, there’s never a point at which it seems too long. There are a couple of scenes toward the end that could possibly benefit from the injection of a little more comedy, but I’m happy with it just the way it is.

In the ranks of junior high school popularity, members of the chess team are usually closer to the bottom than to the top. But Brooklyn’s I.S. 318 is no ordinary school. About 70 percent of its students’ families are living at or below the poverty level, but many of those same students are some of the best young chess players in the country. It probably helps that they have a thriving chess program and a dedicated chess teacher (Ms. Vicary) whose class students can take up to seven times a week, but the support of the parents is also critical, both to help encourage their kids to do well, but also to ensure that chess doesn’t get in the way of their other work.

This documentary is a kind of “a year in the life” look at the school and a number of its students and faculty members, and while it primarily focuses on activity during the school year, it actually spans parts of consecutive years than focusing entirely on one. This is an interesting approach, because it means that not only do we get to see the existing 6th and 7th grade students return for the next year, but we also see a new round of 6th graders coming in, and 8th graders promoted to high school. Rochelle is one such graduating student, and not only does she have the pressure of being one of the highest-rated chess junior players in the nation and a good chance of becoming the first ever female African-American to achieve a “master” rating, but she also has to worry about which high school she will get into. It seems that New York high schools have an admissions process similar to colleges, often including entrance exams where a single bad day could have a significant effect on opportunities that may be available to them in the future.

On the other end of the spectrum, Justus is an incoming sixth grader who is something of a phenomenon and has already reached the “expert” level by age ten. For him, one of the benefits the chess training can provide is a boost of maturity, since although he’s a great player, his confidence is easily shaken and he needs to learn how to brush off a loss and come back strong. And for some students like Patrick who suffer from ADHD and find it hard to focus for extensive periods of time, the discipline of chess might just help trick their minds into learning new behaviors and gaining increased concentration.

While the film’s primary focus is on the people, it also gives us occasional glimpses into the economics of education, and we see the dangers of ever-decreasing budgets that threaten to weaken or eliminate academic programs like chess and music, as well as non-academic extracurriculars like sports. This aspect of the film is remarkable not because of the dangers they face, but because of the reactions of the students and the community. As the poverty-stricken parents are asked to bear an increasingly-larger share of the costs of these programs, it’s not hard to see why the American educational system is falling behind programs in countries all over the world. I certainly think that they’d disagree with the assertion made in Waiting for Superman that larger budgets don’t result in better educational opportunities.

While the film is mostly enjoyable, it does seem to become a bit repetitive near the end, which makes it feel a bit too long. It also occasionally floods you with statistics that are hard to assimilate quickly enough, and it is sometimes confusing as to whether the data given represent final results or in-progress information. But the main points of the film come across clearly, and you’re not likely to walk away disappointed.

I have my own personal blacklist I keep of actors that I don’t watch, and Johnny Depp is near the top. I don’t mind him in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, nor as one third of the replacement for Heath Ledger in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but I’ve never seen him as a pirate, and I try to avoid anything in which he is linked to Tim Burton or Hunter S. Thompson. So I’ve never seen the original television version of <i.21 Jump Street. But despite the movie version’s connection to Depp (and the rumors that he would have a cameo in it), I’d heard enough positive opinions of the film to make me overcome my aversion and give it a shot. I’m glad I did.

The film begins with Schmidt and Jenko (Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) in high school, where they run in different circles. Schmidt is an Eminem wannabe who rarely gets up the courage to talk to girls and gets rejected whenever he does, while Jenko is a popular but brainless jock, and the only reason they know each other is that the former is often the butt of the latter’s jokes. But that’s enough to allow them to recognize each other a few years later when they both find themselves struggling through the police academy. Schmidt aces all the exams but fails the physical challenges, while Jenko has the opposite problem. But unlike high school, they decide to team up and help each other, and they manage to pass the academy.

But just because they managed to pass doesn’t make them good cops. When they completely flub their first attempted bust, their captain (played by Nick Offerman) reassigns them to an undercover division attempting to infiltrate area high schools. They can kind of pass for high school students, and Sagan High has a growing and potentially fatal drug problem. Schmidt dreads this duty since he had a hard enough time in high school the first time around, but Jenko is pumped about once again being able to rule the school and be the center of attention. But while Jenko is beginning to realize that maybe you can’t go home again, Schmidt has to deal with the even more horrifying reality that maybe you can.

Everyone seems to be saying that this is the best comedy of the year so far, and they’re right. It’s true that there isn’t a whole lot of competition so far, but it would have given most 2011 comedies a run for their money as well. It’s got quite a bit of action mixed in with the comedy, so it stays lively even if it is a little longer than the average comedy. It usually avoids falling into most of the standard cliches that other films like this seem to find, and it creates some pretty great images that help enhance its humor. There is perhaps a bit of creepiness with a kind of romance between a high school student and someone only pretending to be a high school student, but what’s even creepier is that it somehow makes the audience root for it to work out.

21 Jump Street manages to be both a good comedy and a good action film, and sometimes even both at the same time. There are a lot of well-known actors giving solid performances, including a few cameos from the original television show, and they’re generally given good roles to play rather than simply relying on audience recognition for effect. I’m not sure that I want to watch it over and over, but it was certainly a much better movie than you might have expected based only on the source material and main cast.

Will Ferrell is one of those guys who often gets “benefit of the doubt” laughter. Even if what he’s doing right now isn’t funny, you know that he’s been funny in the past, and maybe laughing at his stuff is a kind of muscle memory. That’s the only thing I could think of when watching the trailer for Casa de mi Padre, because even though the trailer mostly plays it straight without any real evidence of comedy, there were people laughing through the trailer every time I saw it.

Whatever impression the trailer may provide, the film actually does try to be a comedy. I say “try”, because it’s not always very successful at this. It features Ferrell as Armando, the son of a wealthy but aging Mexican rancher who is about ready to hand over the reins to someone else. He would prefer that person not be Armando, because although he works hard, he’s not very smart, and his father doesn’t have much confidence in him. But Armando has an older brother Raul (Diego Luna) who is a successful businessman and conveniently shows up at just the right time in the plot to keep the story moving. And Raul has also brought with him his beautiful fiancee Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez) who stirs up some feelings in Armado that he’s never had before.

Mexico can be a pretty dangerous place, in large part because of the drug dealers that roam the area. As a child, Armando’s mother was killed right in front of him when she was accosted by a couple of dealers, and just recently he witnessed another murder on his own property when area kingpin Onza (Gael García Bernal) executed a competing dealer. This has instilled Armando with an understandable dislike for drug dealers, and that creates some conflicting feelings when he learns that his brother Raul is himself engaged in the trade. But what makes it even worse for him is that Raul frequently sells in the United States, so he is not only in danger from Onza but also from the American DEA.

Casa de me Padre has the feeling of a very entry-level film. It is subtitled, but it uses only basic Spanish, so anyone who took Spanish 101 in high school (and learned a few curse words on the side) can probably follow along without too much difficulty. Its humor is at a similar level of sophistication, making use of puppets and models and dumb jokes that are often so obvious that you’ve usually anticipated and gotten tired of a gag before it’s even happened. There are a few laughs, but not enough to keep things entertaining for the entirety of its short 84-minute runtime. I would say it’s the kind of film for people who don’t like to think too much, but when you’re in the mood to watch a movie that doesn’t make you think, you’re probably not in the mood to have to read what people are saying.

I had pretty low expectations when I went into the movie, and it did manage to exceed them, so at least that’s a positive. It’s not a horrible movie by any stretch, but it’s just lazy and ineffective when it comes to comedy.

Jeff and I have something in common. You see, I too live at home. And since you could define home as “where you live”, so does pretty much everyone else who isn’t homeless. So perhaps the title for Jeff, Who Lives at Home isn’t as clever as it could have been, but “We Need to Talk About Kevin” had already been claimed, so I guess you have to take what you can get.

In this case, the home in which Jeff (played by Jason Segel) lives is also inhabited by his mother Sharon (Susan Sarandon). Jeff is thirty years old with no job and no ambition beyond smoking pot all the time. This usually puts him in a mood to be perceptive to the messages that the universe puts out, and today that message (from a phone call with wrong number) was “Kevin”. But the second message (from his mom) was to get off his butt and fix a broken shutter in the pantry door. This requires little more than applying a little glue to each end and sticking it in place, but they don’t have any glue so he has to go out and get some. And that’s where the adventure starts.

Through a series of coincidences (which aren’t really coincidences, since Jeff believes that everything happens for a reason), Jeff’s path crosses that of his brother Pat (Ed Helms) who just had an argument with his wife Linda (Judy Greer) and thinks that she might be cheating on him. Through a series of Kevin-related and non-Kevin related events, the universe continues to bring Jeff, Pat, and Linda together, even after they try to go their separate ways.

For what is ultimately a very low-key movie in which much of the action simply happens rather than resulting from the actions of the characters, it manages to evoke a pretty wide range of emotions. It’s funny and frustrating and sad and happy. It’s brilliantly written by the Duplass brothers (who also directed), and played perfectly. It relies heavily on coincidence at several turns, but because Jeff’s entire ethos is that there are no coincidences, it manages to pull it off without being hokey or unbelievable, and also without feeling preachy or pushy. It’s very much a “let’s see what happens” kind of movie that really makes you want to come along with it.

If I have any complaints about the movie, it is that one of the story lines seems very disconnected from the others. There are four main story lines in the film: Jeff and the universe, Jeff and Pat, Pat and Linda, and Sharon and a secret admirer. The first three of these are completely intertwined and work together to create the story. The fourth seems to be largely something that happens to Sharon with a significant impact on her, but no real connection to the rest of the stories. While Sharon is an important character for spurring Jeff into action, and to a lesser extent for uniting him with Pat, the subplot with her secret admirer could have been completely removed from the film without damaging it in any way. On the other hand, I do think that if her storyline had been connected to those of the others (which could have been done fairly easily), it would have resulted a much more complete story with fewer loose ends.

Even with a stray subplot, Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a completely enthralling and highly enjoyable movie that actually stands up well to multiple viewings (although this does amplify its main weakness along with its many strengths). It’s definitely a film worth checking out if you have the opportunity.

As if real movie trailers aren’t bad enough, there’s been a trend in the last few years of creating fake trailers for movies that don’t exist. The 2007 Grindhouse double-feature had a number of fake trailers between the two films, and at least one of them (featuring Danny Trejo as Machete) was actually made into a real movie (albeit not a good one). Similarly, the film Hobo with a Shotgun also began life as a fake trailer that was turned into a very enjoyable movie. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to hope that the trailer for The FP was just a hoax.

Frazier Park is a fairly small town in southern California, a little northwest of Los Angeles. At first glance, it would seem pretty normal. But on a closer look, there is something horribly wrong. It’s like it was ground zero for an A-bomb detonation, but in this case “A” is for “asshole”. It’s almost like a post-apocalyptic devolution where everyone is trying to see whether they can make themselves look dumber than they sound, and it’s a tight race. Every sentence out of their mouths is laced with stupidity and profanity, and rival gangs are always fighting each other over who gets what turf. But they do their fighting with their feet rather than their fists. They play a game called “Beat Beat Revelation” (i.e., we couldn’t get the rights to use “Dance Dance Revolution”).

Two of the biggest gangs are the “248” from the north, and the “245” from the south (and although this isn’t explicitly stated in the movie, it seems that these are telephone exchanges within the 661 area code). BTRO (pronounced bee-trow) is the best Beat-Beat player in the 248, while the 245 is ruled by L Dubba E, and in one particularly heated match BTRO’s legs started to give out, and then his whole body. BTRO died, and his younger brother JTRO couldn’t take it anymore. He left the thug life and got a normal job and started talking and dressing like a normal person. But when L Dubba E seized this opportunity to take over the town, the fate of the FP rests in JTRO’s feet.

Even the most uptight stick in the mud has to get some enjoyment out of the trailer for The FP. It’s the kind of thing that’s just about perfect for a two-minute trailer, and is excruciating for an 82-minute movie. If you take out everything from the trailer, the film is just a lot of swearing, a couple of unnecessarily long training montages, and what is kind of a disgusting trailer park love story. There’s surprisingly little BBR-playing in the film, and what is there is pretty anti-climactic. Even the film’s climax is anti-climactic. What happens at the end isn’t surprising, but I was surprised by how lame they managed to make it seem.

The only reason I saw this movie is because it is being distributed by Drafthouse Films and I wanted to support them. However, I’m surprised Drafthouse Films would have picked this movie, not so much because of the content, but because it’s almost contrary to the experience they want to provide in Alamo Drafthouse theaters. The theaters are like churches for movies, with strict policies preventing talking, texting, or other kinds of disruptive behaviors, but the kinds of people who really get into The FP are the worst offenders in this regard. There’s not much chance I would have liked The FP even if the people next to me weren’t talking for most of the movie (and yelling a couple of times), but it certainly added to the frustration of the experience.

I think that every sitcom from the last 30 years containing one or more high school kids has done a “let’s throw a party while your parents are out of town” episode. They all follow pretty much the same recipe: they party gets out of hand, stuff gets broken, the kids try to hide it from the parents. They usually get caught and punished, or they have to go to extremes in order to atone for their sins, but in the end they learn a valuable lesson and relationships are stronger as a result. They’re formulaic, but the good ones can still find a way to be fun.

Project X starts off with the same old cliche. It’s Thomas’ 17th birthday, which just happens to coincide with his parents’ anniversary. So they’re going out of town to celebrate their anniversary, and they’ve given Thomas permission to have maybe four or five friends over for his birthday. Thomas is definitely not one of the cool kids at school, and in fact he’s mostly invisible, so he lets his best friends Costa and J.B. talk him into a small party of say fifty people. But of Costa wants to do his friend a favor, so he invites a few more people, and they invite a few more people, and so on. And things start to get out of control.

However, there are some deviations from the old standard. This is a hard-R movie rather than an after-school special, so it’s got a lot more swearing and nudity and sex crimes than you’re used to from this kind of story, the destruction is more than just a broken vase or stained carpet, and there are substantially fewer lessons learned by the end. It tries to be Superbad, but fails miserably and just ends up being more crude and less funny. Actually, not at all funny. The only attempts at comedy in the film are via shock value, but the initial attempts are so blatant and ineffective that you’re completely numbed to what comes later. I have no trouble at all believing that this was the work of a first-time (and hopefully only-time) director, but I’m shocked that Michael Bacall, who had a hand in the absolutely awesome Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and reportedly hilarious 21 Jump Street, could have also been responsible for this mess.

To further its failure, the film is told via found footage, and it’s one of the sloppiest examples yet. With only a couple of exceptions, there’s only a single camera operator (who’s introduced with a derogatory slur and then is mostly ignored until a lame attempt at a joke near the end), and yet we see lots of different camera angles, in and out of the water, simultaneously up on the roof and down on the ground, etc. There’s no reason they couldn’t have made it like a traditional movie, but the characters’ acknowledgement of the camera and its operator just creates a new way for this movie to fail.

It’s hard to see anything of any value in Project X. It’s basically the standard TV plot except that they’ve chopped off any hint of a moral and kept stuffing in crudeness until it was long enough to be considered a movie. If you’re thinking about watching this, then just go with Superbad or Sixteen Candles or that episode of Saved by the Bell where they broke Screech’s mom’s Elvis statue, or any of the millions of other better examples of the same story.