"Loser" buddies Thomas (Thomas Mann) J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown), Costa (Oliver Cooper), and Dax (Dax Flame) plan to epically celebrate Thomas' 17th birthday while his parents are away. Agenda items include getting laid by the in-crowd, and to socially engineer their transformations into popular party legends. It is to be, as Costa says, "game changing."
Social media and technology are leveraged to make the exponentially growing guest list plausible, and it is disturbing for any older viewer to consider the implications of smartphones introduced into the high school ecosystem.
Dax documents the debauchery with his handheld camera (and is rarely seen or heard himself). The handheld footage is largely effective, and in this context does not seem gimmicky. There is creative use of other cameras from inside police cars or news helicopters. How the topless underwater shots were taken, however, remains unexplained, but in this movie bare breasts are their own explanation.
There are some genuine laughs to be had, though the amount of laughs will be inversely proportional to your age. Much of the escalating chaos is predictable, like the fate of dad's beloved car, which he naturally gave explicit instructions not to touch. Even the more surprising events ("There's a midget in the oven") fail to hold interest within the movie's short attention span.
By the party's inevitably disastrous end, the characters and audience are spared any real consequences, which are the one thing not caught on camera. Despite its high-tech upgrade and unabashed balls-to-the-wall attitude, once the smoke clears "Project X" is a new coat of paint on the same old house party.
| Movie title | Project X |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2012 |
| MPAA Rating | R |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | Predictable retread of any number of wild house party movies. The amount of laughs to be had is inversely proportional to the age of the viewer. |
