Is this an early contender for most obnoxious film of 2012? Like ‘The Hangover’ in a training bra, ‘Project X’ chronicles the outrageous antics of a monster blow-out. Here it’s geeky teenage boys throwing an out-of-control house party in a plot that feels like it’s lifted from one of those articles the Daily Mail likes to scare the parents with: ‘Middle-class Kids On The Rampage!’
‘Project X’ is shot as gimmicky ‘found footage’ (yet another kid with his mom’s video camera and the precocious skills of a young Spielberg) but that’s the least of the film’s offences. It raised my moral outrage heckles in ways I didn’t think possible. It gives off the whiff of pseudo-charm and suggests all the non-stop talk of getting laid by bitches is harmless because these kids really have zero experience of actual proper living girls. Seriously? And there are endless flashes of boobs (imagine a X-rated American Apparel ad). Which is depressing, because despite its 18 rating, ‘Project X’ will surely have a long and prosperous afterlife on DVD, watched by teens.
There is scope here for a marginally less offensive movie – the script is co-written by Michael Bacall (‘Scott Pilgrim vs The World’) and you can picture Michael Cera in the lead. Plus there’s a smattering of neat touches that would be amusing in a less crass movie: a pair of pint-sized prepubescent ninja security guards wielding Tasers are pleasingly deadpan in a Wes Anderson-ish way. But director Nima Nourizadeh pretty much ticks every box marked crude and predictable: sprays of vomit, girls snogging, someone giving the dog a blowback, dad’s Merc in the pool… Imagine it, and it’s in there.