There’s a brief moment (very brief) at the beginning of Project X when I was almost fooled into thinking that I might have been sitting in the 21st century update of Dazed and Confused. On a level – a very basic level – the plot is similar: a few not-so-cool high school kids try to up their reputations (and increase their chances of scoring with their female classmates) by throwing the party of the century. In the early scenes, the reserved, nervous Thomas (Thomas Mann) is egged on by his gregarious, animated, and only mildly amusing friend from Queens, Costa (Oliver Cooper), as they piece together the necessities – booze, drugs, and, of course, gorgeous guests – all the while being filmed by an trench coat-wearing loaner. We begin to get something a feel for these characters, their vulnerability, a charming, wide-eyed sense of hope. It’s a little choppy and thrown together, but that’s the point: the whole thing is shot like a home movie, another sputtering Hollywood attempt to speak down to younger generations with a forced, “YouTube” aesthetic.
Unfortunately, the demands of the found and viral video medium work against the resilient virtues of good story and well-realized characterization. After the first thirty minutes or so, we’re already knee-deep in Thomas’ birthday party, as hordes of pretty teenagers take over his parents’North Pasadenahome. It’s all boob and booze shots, slow motion euphoria, yelling, and captured hijinks, punctuated by a few toss away story points. Thomas is scared the party’s getting too big; Thomas likes Kirby (Kirby Bliss Blanton), but may have squandered his chance when Kirby walks in on the hottest girl in school, topless, straddling her nerdish friend. The party is opening all sorts of doors for its hosts.
Project X operates according to hierarchy of adolescent social values, wherein nothing is more important than earning the admiration of as many peers as possible. But the movie itself plays like a desperate play for its adolescent audience’s esteem, with too much camera mugging and not enough of a sense of why we should care about any of it. With all of its pandering frivolity, I think it underestimates how savvy teenagers are to posers; and I don’t see Project X tapping into any groundswell of cult affection. It all devolves and wallows before juicing up its finale by amping-up the party’s antics to absurd, over-the-top excess. That finale is fun to watch, but more because we were holding out hope all along that this YouTube video-turned MTV Spring Break shoot would blow up.
