2014 teen sex comedy
Rating: 13/20
Plot: A teenager finds himself stuck in a raunchy rip-off of a Groundhog Day time loop ending and beginning each time he ejaculates. He finds himself reliving the same day over and over again until he gets it right.
I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the genre, but I thought this movie was pretty funny. That plot synopsis up there probably makes it sound a little cheaper than it actually is. It’s one of those movies that’s clever while at the same time not being as clever as it thinks it is. The comedy is quick and modern. I don’t like references to contemporary things–like Ellen Degeneres here–and not all of the jokes in this are going to stick. No pun intended. But the jokes come–no pun intended–fast and furiously, like a teenage boy, so you don’t have to wait around too long before you find something that sort of works.
The protagonist is likable and, more importantly, believable. His dilemmas are your typical high school senior dilemmas–being bullied, finding love, getting into college, having your mother catch you post-jerk-off. I think I like the character more because he’s never whiny, dealing with what comes at him with wit. His friend reminded me of Boner from Growing Pains, but a Boner who’s freed from television to say whatever he wants to. The friend is played by Craig Roberts who I really liked in Submarine. Roberts gets a lot of the funniest lines. Brian Huskey gets a small but funny part as the principal, some kid named Adam Riegler adopts a unibrow to play an uber-smart kid, Steve Coulter plays the protagonist’s dad and gets to say “When I was his age, I could fill a bucket,” and there’s a hilariously odd Israeli kid played by Jonathan Kleitman. Best of all is Alan Tudyk as the interviewer from Georgetown. Anytime a character can make you laugh at the word “lupus,” you know an actor’s nailing it.
This isn’t for everybody, but if you’ve ever been interested in seeing an R-rated Boner, it’s probably for you. I like these time loop movies, and this one has a nice little embedded lesson that I probably could have used back when I was too young to watch movies like this. It doesn’t stray too far from its genre, but it’s definitely not a complete waste of time and might be worth it just to see Alan Tudyk cry and ask, “Why were there only one set of footprints in the sand?”
Boner Stabone
