21 & Over (2013)
Directed by Jon Lucas
Brilliant student Jeff Chang has the most important interview of his life tomorrow. But today is still his birthday, what starts off as a casual celebration with friends evolves into a night of debauchery that risks to derail his life plan.
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3 films that influenced 21 & Over
What critics say influenced 21 & Over
Not only do Lucas and Moore borrow freely from their previous work, they owe a debt to better teen comedies, including “Risky Business” and “American Pie.”
Lucas and Moore push these pratfalls to the extreme, but the gross-out humour feels old-hat when measured next to earlier, funnier films like American Pie and Hot Tub Time Machine.
The characters are shaded versions of types we’re very familiar with from the American Pie series -- Miller is a less physically threatening Stifler, while Casey is basically a less incompetent Jim.
Cribbing from the likes of “Animal House,” “American Pie,” “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Superbad,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Old School” and “The Hangover,” this movie takes beats from all these films and fuses them into something that is able to stand all on its own.
Instead?and thankfully?it comes closer to reminding of a lesser, college-set variation on 2007's " Superbad ," a bawdy teen comedy that sneakily hid its warm-hearted story of male friendship behind a whole lot of R-rated hijinks.
This film owes a debt to the teen high-jinks comedies that came before it, from Porky's to Ferris Bueller's Day Off to Superbad.
After all, I still enjoy watching high school and college party movies like “Porky’s,” “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Animal House” and “Superbad.”
This can work — Superbad stands as proof.
Cribbing from the likes of “Animal House,” “American Pie,” “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Superbad,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Old School” and “The Hangover,” this movie takes beats from all these films and fuses them into something that is able to stand all on its own.
The film is, perhaps, a little less in love with late-capitalist bacchanalia than Project X and a deal less uncomfortable in its sexual politics than Superbad .
“21 and Over” would have been better served going for pure comedy the whole time – like “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” successfully pulled off – and a script rewrite that took chances beyond “The Hangover” formula we’ve already seen twice now.