Project X (2012)

Directed by: Nima Nourizadeh | 88 minutes | comedy | Actors: Thomas Mann, Jonathan Daniel Brown, Oliver Cooper, Dax Flame, Nichole Bloom, Martin Klebba

It’s hard not to compare ‘Project X’ to the great ‘The Hangover’ movies. Since the director of these films, Todd Phillips, has also been involved in ‘Project X’, albeit this time only as a producer and not as a director or writer (as is the case with both ‘The Hangover’ and ‘The Hangover Part II’ was) a comparison is lurking. The theme of the film, a gigantic party that gets completely out of hand, also makes a comparison with the aforementioned films logical. Yet it is not fair to compare ‘Project X’ to these successful films: apart from the fact that the alcohol is central, it turns out that the similarities are ultimately not too bad. In addition, ‘Project X’ cannot even be in the shadow of the aforementioned blockbusters from a qualitative point of view.

‘Project X’ introduces us to the three teenagers Thomas, Costa and JB (played by Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper and Jonathan Daniel Brown respectively), three reasonable novices in the acting field. The three are in their senior year of high school and Thomas and JB in particular are not exactly among the most popular boys in the class. Having a girl is therefore not an option for them. To change this, they decide to throw an unforgettable party in honor of Thomas’ seventeenth birthday that will lift their image from nerd to pop star in one fell swoop. Combine this with the fact that Thomas’s parents just moved out that weekend and all the ingredients for a gigantic party seem to be there.

The happening itself is not the problem of ‘Project X’. On the contrary, those scenes do not disappoint. Once it has started and later in the evening the whole house and also the garden are packed with partying teenagers and the music is happily pumped into your ears, you know that the party is in good shape. And the later it gets, the more it gets out of hand. A car being driven into the pool and one of the guests being put in the oven are just a few examples. When the police arrive at the end of the evening and the whole neighborhood becomes a battlefield, Thomas’s birthday party is truly an event that will be remembered for a long time.

The real problem with ‘Project X’ is basically everything else that goes on. First of all, there are the three main characters. Director Nima Nourizadeh has had to do his best to make the characters of the three as superficial as possible, resulting in three boys who meet all the prejudices that exist about adolescent teenagers. Life is all about drinking as much alcohol as possible and sleeping with as many girls as possible, or at least that’s what this trio would have us believe. The crown in that area is taken by Costa, who manages to perform throughout the film not to make a single sensible comment. The character quickly arouses a huge aversion. The humor itself is also often of a low level. For example, in the beginning there is a fairly embarrassing scene in which Costa pretends to have sex with a garden gnome and this dubious level does not improve during the film. The result of this is that you as a viewer still get the most sympathy with Thomas’s little dog, because the poor animal doesn’t escape the festivities either.

But the extraordinarily bland humor and superficial characters aren’t the only problem with ‘Project X’. For example, it was decided to film most of the film with a handheld camera. While this doesn’t necessarily work badly, it’s still strange to have to follow all the action with a cameraman constantly running after the chaos. But above all, ‘Project X’ is just too simple, too uninspired and too predictable to be fun. The completely unnecessary romance at the end fits in perfectly with this picture. Ultimately, the film offers no more than a nice party, which is just too scanty. In addition, ‘Project X’ succeeds in making an adolescent film like ‘American Pie’ suddenly seem very mature and that cannot have been the intention of the makers.