Surprising

Rating: Null/10 (11 July 1999)

Surprised. That's the most apt statement that I can use to convey how I felt after seeing this movie. I'd read the press reports and a few reviews. I'd seen the previews. I expected a cheap, shallow, sex-drenched, teen comedy. My surprise came at not seeing all those preconceptions fulfilled. Most were, don't get me wrong. It is all of those things I mentioned above and more, except shallow. I went to see this with my younger (18) brother and we both laughed ourselves silly. Make no mistake, this is the gross-out, sex comedy of gross-out sex comedies, but if you scratch the surface, you might come away pleasantly surprised. There is real heart here. It may be cheap and just a little contrived, but it's there nonetheless. The premise of 4 bozos making a pact to get laid by prom night belies the underlying story. What we think of as the end-all-be-all in life----sex, isn't. The people we dismiss out of hand for one reason or another, might be just what we were looking for, and oftentimes nothing like we had them pigeon-holed. No, this isn't new ground that's broken here, but it certainly isn't what was to be gleaned from the marketing of this picture. Sex, like anything else in life, is more than what we think it will be be before we get it. It can lead to love or disappointment; it can make us feel 10 ft. tall or 10 in. high. Every one of these four guys just want it. They don't look at the who, the how, or the after. One of the reasons they, and we, cannot is that it's different for everyone. Like anything else, we take away what we put in (no pun intended).
It is the journey that is taken to get there that make for the laughter here. It is real. Moreso than ever portrayed before (mostly). Fear of parents, fear of classmates, fear of failure, all these are portrayed here with remarkable clarity. One of the things I liked best about this film was the character of Jim's father, played by Eugene Levy. Here, for the first time in recent memory, is a parent that is not mean or clueless. A parent who isn't portrayed as the enemy while remaining a parent. As uncomfortable as it is for Jim, he finally realizes what a treasure he has there in his father. In this country, the portrayal of a parent who, while surprised and initially revolted, by his son's behavior, he is willing to concede that he knows what his son is going through because he went through it himself, as did we all.
I would advise, even though it has an R-rating, parents should take their teenagers to see this movie. If someone is there other than just friends, a young person can see that there is more to this film than masurbation jokes, and parents might get a blunt knock on the head that may jog their memory back to when they were as confused as the people up on the screen. I'm beginning to think that this country emits some kind of amnesia-inducing ray at all citizens once they start to close in on 30 yrs. old. It's too bad because, as parents, we are supposed to pass our lessons learned down to the next generation. It seems to be the norm elsewhere, but here, society teaches us to let each new generation blindly grope about the darkened room of sexual initiation and experimentation. What is the result: unwed mothers and fathers, teenage parents, STD's, etc. These are all things that can be avoided if we are taught by those in the know rather than left to fend for ourselves. You have to go to class and pass a test to drive a car, but sex, we throw them the keys and say, "You're on your own." The strange thing is, if the wrong decisions are made by the young people, they are vilified. If you think about it, this is the only situation where these kinds of illogical and arbitrary rules apply. And that's just sad.