Rendering 12. Cinema

The article “21 and Over” was published by Tim Robey on May 2, 2013. It discussed this exuberant frat comedy from Hangover writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore succeeds because of its likeable cast.

Speaking of this article, it’s necessary to say that “21 and Over”, America’s legal drinking age, is a wee bit older than the target audience for the exuberant frat comedy of the same name, which marks the directorial debut of Hangover writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Really, though, they might just as well have called it Boys Only. A list of the roles for women would not leave this movie covered in glory. Two rather fierce sorority girls get spanked by paddles while blindfolded, wrongly assuming that their fellow sisters are administering a hazing, when it’s the two male leads who have instead snuck into their dorm.

In addition, the main plot is about two high-school buddies, played by Miles Teller and Skylar Astin, who practically kidnap their pal Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) on his 21st birthday, even though it’s the night before his big interview for medical school, and there’s a terrifyingly stereotypical Asian dad waiting in the wings to tan their hides.

It’s important to point the teeny Jeff Chang  gets utterly wrecked, and the other two lose track of him somewhere around the point where he’s hopping nude across a college lawn with a teddy bear glued to his penis. Chon is comatose, or near it, for so much of the movie’s running time that it starts to resemble Weekend at Bernie’s with a stressed, unconscious Chinese medical student instead of a corpse.

As for me, Teller is just as terrific, puckish and endearingly intense as he was playing film-stealing second fiddle in the Footloose remake, and the promising Astin, who was stuck with boring-boyfriend duties in Pitch Perfect, matches him every step of the way. If we must have three horny fools getting their rocks off during a wild all-nighter prefabricated for cult appeal, at least it’s these three, whose combined bonhomie could get just about any party started.