For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Hope that's OK.
Read on!
The
Breakdown - Project X
The Impression:
Party movie specialist Todd Phillips (The Hangover)
produces the found footage genre's attempt at giving teens
something to shoot for whenever their parents leave town.
The Reality:
The weird thing about Project X is that it isn't much
of a found footage film at all. The majority of it
feels like its shot professionally, and there's obviously a
soundtrack in certain scenes. So why not just shoot it
like a normal film? I'm not sure. My guess is that
because it's essentially an insane remake of Superbad,
someone somewhere figured it needed another gimmick to
succeed. That's too bad, honestly, as Project X
would have definitely held up on its own. The
characters, while totally unoriginal, are easy to like, and
I thought the story paced really well (and had the right
amount of ups and downs) once the party really got going.
Oh well. Expect to like it, but don't be surprised if
you have multiple moments where you wonder why the only
found footage aspect is to at times have the camera really
far away from the characters that are talking.
The Lesson:
Sometimes the only gimmick that's needed is no gimmick.
-
-
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
