Starring: Drake Bell, Andrew Caldwell, Kevin Covais, Haley Bennett, Nick Zano, Gary Owen

Directed by: Deb Hagan

MGM Studios

The Official Site of College

Discuss College on the boards!

I'm no stranger to teen sex comedies. There will always be a special place in my heart for the provocative undertones that come along with underage drinking and the undying quest to get laid, but to make a sex comedy successful in this day and age the movie has to excel in three very specific areas, two of which can be found the genre's title. Make sure you give the audience lots of sex, lots of comedy and lots of (what could the third thing be!?) heart. The sex comedies that stand the test of time are the ones that masquerade true emotion with crude humor and nipple slips. The sex comedies that end up being classics are the ones that can make the audience care even in the face of blue balls. College handles each criteria like a 14-year-old boy fumbling his thumbs around the hooks of his first bra at a make-out party. He knows it's important but he has no idea how to get to it and look cool doing so.

College is about three high school kids who head off to take a campus tour and hopefully get into one of the legendary parties they’ve heard so much about. As uninspired as the title is, a good bit of time is actually spent developing the three leads. You’ve got the fat nerd who’s overcompensating for something by being funny, the skinny book nerd that’s trying to impress his parents, and the emotional nerd who pines for that perfect girl and has trouble letting go.

It’s great and all, that some thought was put into the main characters, it’s just a shame that it reads like the casting sheet from Superbad.

Because the characters fall into very specific categories it was hard not to draw some comparisons between the two movies even though the two groups go on very different adventures. The filmmakers behind College were slick enough to lift the character guides but no the plot. Unfortunately they just lift the plot of every other college movie ever made.

Okay, that’s a little harsh. College follows a few archetypes, but has its own shinning moments. There’s a nice sequence towards the end where the… nerds get revenge… Well… there’s the part where the emotional one comes to the dream girl’s window and will… Say… Anything… to get her back… Okay the part where someone spray paints “Pussy� on the side of their car while they’re on… Va…ca…tion… Oh, there’s the part where they go to an… Animal House… …Mighty Ducks 2…

You see where I was going with that? I feel bad pointing it out because it’s not like the obvious lines to past influences were staring me in the face while I was watching the movie. It’s just one of those things that is hard to ignore in hindsight. I could continue this pattern of attack and defence but what it comes down to is this - College doesn’t suck but it’s anything but unique.

The cast isn’t half bad. Haley Bennett is a movie star waiting to happen, and even though Andrew Caldwell and Kevin Covais are playing hackneyed character types, they make it work. That little American Idol runner-up even does us the honor of acting without singing which isn’t something the rest of the rejects from that show can say. I personally thought it was a great move to leave the mike stand at home. There’s a right time and a wrong time for a booming voice, and mid hand job or right after vomiting on the Dean’s windshield aren’t exactly ideal musical cues.

When it comes down to it, College made a valiant effort at being a great sex comedy. There are one or two times where it actually gets pretty steamy, and even though I should have been falling out of my chair with laughter pains throughout, the one or two times where the movie had me getting vocal were worthy surprises. An attempt is made to complete the three pointed circle of the sex comedy genre (I totally failed geometry) by making us care about the characters, but it never connects as well as it should. It feels like were supposed to care about them, like we’re being forced to instead of it being a natural thing, and it really hurts the ending of the film.

It’s hard to be too mad at College though even if it takes a little while to get going and once it does its only brushes with greatness are few and far between. It’s not a terrible movie. It serves its purpose without humiliating itself, but is that really enough? Should we have to settle for “pretty good�, even in a genre fuelled by libido? We’ve seen how good these movies can be. No more excuses, no more phoning it in. Bring your dick jokes, bring your bare breasts, bring your nerds and make us care about them!

Rating: 4 out of 10 - I shouldn’t have to defend College. This movie should be awesome! It’s about nerds getting laid and how often does that actually happen let alone on a giant screen? College should have brought geeks in by the Millennium Falcon full but for some reason the crowds weren’t there.

Not for me, but by the time College wiggles its way onto cable, it'll become one of those flavor-of-the-week stroke movies for pre-teen perverts to admire. It'll find its audience there.

You know… I couldn't tell you why, when I picture myself and Irv doing mathematical experiments, it takes place in an elementary school classroom. A really low grade one from the looks of it. At what grade do they stop posting the alphabet and hand-turkeys for Thanksgiving on the walls? For my international readers that may be confused by the concept of hand-turkeys, here's a little background on what they are: In late November we Americans celebrate a holiday called Thanksgiving. It's a harvest thing tied in with early settlers and fat birds. To keep little kids busy at school during this time of the year, teachers will have them trace their hand on a sheet of construction paper and then decorate the outline to look like the holiday's mascot! It’s fun. We all did it when we were little and as I was drawing this classroom it felt very natural to include a few on the walls. Even though it’s still over 2 months off. As to why Irv and I are wearing lab coats… your guess is as good as mine.

I gave this example of the standard Hand-Turkey drawing, but I thought that it might be fun to do one of myself for today’s vote incentive. It was surprisingly fun. I hadn’t done anything like that in years and wished I’d had some crayons around to make it even more authentic. As I was scanning it in I envisioned famous-movie-character-hand-turkeys like Terminator-Turkey or Alien Queen-Turkey. Perhaps that’s a project worth doing around the Thanksgiving season. I encourage all of you to run home and do one of your own in the meantime though!

As always you can check out all the past incentive images in this thread here!

My Best Friend’s Girl - Even though the Red Band trailer for My Best Friend’s Girl is light years better than the watered down, family friendly version running before the PG-13 and below crowds, cuss words and innuendo aren’t going to distract us from the fact that the cast (with the exception of Alec Baldwin) are winding down on there 15 minutes of fame and that the plot is a painful sitcom stretched out an hour too long and projected as big as can be for all the world to see.

All of this I can take though. I like formula. I like predictability. I wear it like a safety blanket and laugh with the carefree whimsy of a man who knows there’s better stuff out there but that a warmed over plot line from Three’s Company is not without its charms. I can even deal with the cast. They’ve all hit it big and spent a good amount of time making you wonder why, but it’s a group of likeable funny folks that I’m ready to have fun with!

That I can forgive but My Best Friend’s Girl promotes two things that I cannot overlook no matter how hard I try. 1 – How you gonna make a crappy movie based on a Cars song? Ric Ocasek is totally rolling over in his grave. (Totally not dead.) 2 – Dane Cook’s character’s name is “Tank�. Who names their kid “Tank�? Even as a dare? Even as a nickname it’s completely ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that when I named my zombie character from Free Lunch “Tank�, I obscured it and chose to continue obscuring it every time his name was mentioned, foolishly convincing myself I would one day come up with something better. The of course I forgot to obscure it and was met with 40 e-mails one morning alerting me how lame it and I were. I wonder if Dane Cook will get a “lame� e-bomb set off on him too.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with My Best Friend’s Girl.

Thanks so much for reading guys! I’ve got a comic done for Bangkok Dangerous so expect that soon!