21 and Over Dares You to Get Offended


It's hard to know what to laugh at anymore -- the only guideline, maybe, is that we'll know it when we see it. And Jon Lucas and Scott Moore's guy-humor extravaganza 21 & Over isn't quite it. 21 & Over, in which three college guys set out for a night of drinking and, they hope, debauchery, is filled with crude gags that almost tip into the red on the bad-taste-ometer: One of its characters, in a drunken stupor, eats a tampon -- unused, thank God, as this isn't a Catherine Breillat movie. The trio crash a sorority house filled with tough, angry Latinas -- stereotype alert! One of the guys tosses his cookies while riding a mechanical bull; his puke spins into the air in slow motion, a visual symphony of pearlescent beige droplets. There's even an uptight Asian girl who plays field hockey -- stereotype alert number two! You can almost see the minds of the filmmakers working: Someone out there has just got to take umbrage at 21 & Over -- please.



Starring Miles Teller, Justin Chon, Skyler Astin, and Sarah Wright. Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. 93 minutes. Rated R.

Mayhem ensues, but as any woman writing about guy humor will tell you, it's really all about male insecurity. And 21 & Over definitely is about male insecurity. These kids, we learn, are facing big life issues: Casey, the sweet, responsible one, is getting cold feet over the cookie-cutter finance career he's headed for, especially after he meets a free-spirit Breck-girl blonde (played by Parks and Recreation's Sarah Wright). Miller, the bright, wise-cracking schemer, has, unbeknownst to his friends, dropped out of school altogether. And the smartest, if most reserved, of them all, JeffChang is the Asian kid who -- anti-stereotype alert! -- is lousy at science and has no desire whatsoever to go to medical school. (The movie's best line, funny in a rueful way, is JeffChang's response when his friends urge him to just tell his father outright that he really doesn't want to be a doctor: "Oh my God, you guys, that is so white.")

21 & Over has a few mildly amusing gags, as when that Latina sorority ultimately takes its revenge; the scene also addresses the homoerotic subtext of buddy comedies head-on and face-forward, in a way that's surprisingly unexploitive. Like its older brothers The Hangover movies, it puts lots of male humiliation right up front. (You really don't want to know how JeffChang ends up with a teddy bear Superglued to his penis.) Perhaps that's a way of leavening the purportedly transgressive humor these movies trade in -- it's as if the protagonists are saying, "We can be as crude as we want because, really, we're hurting inside."

But the movie rambles in a way that dilutes any possibility of edgy discomfort. Lucas and Moore have good control over the timing within the gags; it's the spaces between them that stretch out awkwardly. You can't hate 21 & Over, and you can't laugh at it. The most you can do is just pity it for not being as outrageous as it thinks it is. And as any guy will tell you, being pitied is the ultimate humiliation.

Great humor, even when it's wrapped in intelligent bohemian's clothing a la Lenny Bruce, still comes from the id, which means it's bound to offend someone, sometime. Plus, it's more than OK for guys to make comedies about hurting inside. But there's one hitch: The movies have to be funny. That goes for allegedly female-centric movies like Bridesmaids, too -- if the alternative to incessant fart and boob jokes is Melissa McCarthy taking a crap in the sink, I'll take the farts and boobs.

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