R-rated comedies tend to be rare, and this is an example why.

What They Say:
Straight-A college student Jeff Chang has always done what he was supposed to do. But when his two best friends Casey and Miller surprise him with a visit for his 21st birthday, Jeff Chang decides to do everything he wants to do for a change, even though his important medical school interview is early the next morning. What was supposed to be one beer becomes a night of humiliation, over indulgence and utter debauchery in this coming-of-drinking-age-comedy, from the writers of ‘The Hangover,’ about living youth to its fullest.

The Review:
If there’s a guilty pleasure I have when it comes to movies, it’s the teenage comedies, especially those of the R-rated variety. Often they’re just awful and juvenile in the worst sense of the word, but there are always standout ones that hit over the years. Even though it changed over the course of the run, the American Pie movies are ones that I can still laugh at since it managed to pull off the feat of showing the characters grow up and you actually came to like them. And a lot of that happened in just the first movie. With a number of R-rated films having done better in the last couple of years, it’s not a surprise to see that the gents who wrote The Hangover are trying to expand their résumé as we get Jon Lucas and Scott More not only writing the screenplay for this film but also making their directorial debut.

The premise of the film is certainly straightforward enough as we get three young men coming together for some hell raising, though the plans don’t go quite as they’d intended. The central focus is that of Jeff Chang who just turned twenty-one and his friends Casey and Miller have come from their own respective colleges to help their high school best friend celebrate the momentous occasion. There’s certainly a lot to be said for enjoying a day like that and all that it entails and friends like Casey and Miller really are the types you want to do that with since they’ll push you on. Unfortunately for Jeff (or JeffChang as he’s credited in the film since Casey and Miller refer to him that way, occasionally inserting his middle name), he’s got a critical interview the next morning that his strict Asian father has set up for him for his medical career and he can’t go out. Even though he lives in a house with other roommates at his college.

Suffice to say, Miller makes the case that they do need to get out for a bit just to celebrate on some level. Which is fun, but before you know it, Jeff’s getting pretty plastered (even though we learn he had quite the high tolerance in high school and consumed tons then) and it all goes downhill from there. It’s almost like a Weekend at Bernie’s film once Jeff gets beyond the point of no return and passes out sometime after midnight while they’re doing serious bar crawl that let him show off his ID in the bouncers faces like he’s wanted to for an age. While Casey and Miller did egg him on to go out, they do at least realize they need to get him back home, get him some sleep and get him ready for when his father arrives the next morning at seven. Unfortunately, not being from around there, they haven’t a clue where he lives. So it’s an adventure of sorts to get him back home.

Unfortunately, the adventure is pretty below average at best. While there are obviously easier ways to figure out how to get him home, even if you are pretty inebriated (which Casey and Miller never seem to be), they end up going for the most weird way of trying to get him home. They end up sneaking into a sorority, thinking it was a different one where a girl they met earlier might be able to help them, to getting a gun which gets shot off and causes a buffalo to stampede. A case chase is involved, of sorts, some amusingly big action moment that has a surreal aspect about it that feels right considering the situation when Jeff gets driving with a serious hangover, and a continued series of run-ins with one the “spirit master” of the campus, a guy named Ryan who plays the sort-of bully for things. And in the mix of it all there’s obviously a little romance as Casey is trying to hook up with this one girl he met.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8GTuWUFqdU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]Sixteen Candles in how the racial factor was played. The other thing that doesn’t help the film is that it does miss going the obvious routes and it’s so painfully obvious that it just proves to be distracting in their overall quest. Of course, playing up the idea that they’re drunk so anything goes is the main point, but still.

Where the film does succeed, but again falls short of really making something of it, is that as the night goes on we see some real expression of the three main characters. As Casey and Miller do their best to get him home, they learn a lot about their friend that they haven’t seen in an age and discover a really tragic character, at least based on their reading of the situations. At the same time, we see how Miller has managed to screw his own life up more because he simply can’t get his shit together, as he says, to how Casey is just focused so much on growing up that he’s forgotten how to have fun. They’re simple matters really, but with the end of college aspect coming up and the next change in their lives for high school friends that have drifted, there’s a missed opportunity to do something really meaningful here within a comedy. Instead, what you’re left with is an uninteresting character in Casey and a character like Miller where if he was a friend in real life, you’d have so little to do with him. People do change over the years, especially childhood ones, but someone like Miller just takes it to a whole other level. Part of me realizes that these kinds of characters made a certain sort of sense in older comedies from the seventies and eighties, but they’re feeling very worn now in 2013 to be sure since even in films like this, we do want just a bit more sophistication. Sadly, 21 And Over is just banal at best.

In Summary:
I’ll easily admit I didn’t have high expectations going into 21 And Over simply because it’s the type of film where when you see the trailer, you know you’re seeing the best bits. The bit with them throwing Jeff off of the swimming pool cover was pretty much the only moment that made me laugh and I’d seen it repeatedly already. Seeing him slow motion puke while riding a mechanical bull? Not so much. The film has some decent ideas to it and there’s nothing seriously wrong with how it plays out or unfolds, but it’s pretty barebones and you’re not really left caring about anyone. And you’re certainly not left wanting to see where the characters lives go from there. With the R rating, it’s mostly just for the vulgarity and several scenes of toplessness about it, though they do make sure that in exchange for all of that we get to see the guys naked from behind quite often, especially towards the end. In that regard, it’s at least welcome to see some balance there since Casey and Miller have to go the distance with what they suffer after the whole sorority incident. In the end though, there’s not a lot to recommend here beyond a mildly amusing movie to watch on cable some late night in a year or less.

Grade: D+