“The Virginity Hit” DVD Review
There’s probably nothing worse than getting a film like The Virginity Hit on your doorstep after a drought of nothing to review. While I enjoy a good vacation from work and school as much as the next person, to return to this was like going back to school and your first class being a group communication class. It could be great, you don’t really know, but from the outset it looks like it’s going to be a terrible, terrible time to be had. Still, you press forward (or play, in this case) and hope for the best. After all, how could a class that’s been taken by hundreds before you be all that bad? Or in our case how could a movie that has been done before hundreds of times be all that bad? Oh wait…that scenario is significantly worse…
Synopsis
From the guys behind Step Brothers comes THE VIRGINITY HIT, an outrageous mockumentary about trying to lose your virginity while the whole world watches. Matt is the last of his buddies to lose his virginity. With his stepbrother recording his every humiliating move and posting it online, Matt gets revenge on his cheating girlfriend, breaks the law, gets a sexy cyber offer too-good-to-be-true, meets the porn star of his dreams and becomes an Internet sensation in the process. Getting laid was never this funny.
Ahahah, “getting laid was never this funny.” HILARIOUS! Not really but that’s the type of humor we’re set up for here. I had hopes since Will Ferrell and Adam McKay produced his film, but about ten minutes into it I realized I just watched this a few years ago with Sex Drive and a decade before that with American Pie. Then there’s some Superbad in there too for good measure. Don’t get me wrong, those films I previously mentioned I did enjoy…but they’re all spaced out (well, Superbad and Sex Drive weren’t, but they were different enough I guess) so that it didn’t seem like overlap. The Virginity Hit is the same basic “lets get our friend laid!” premise and as tried and true as that is in most cases, with this film I just felt very underwhelmed by it.
I think the problem here is the film wants to have the heart of a Judd Apatow picture but with the raunch of…well, a Judd Apatow picture. The problem with his films is they’re filled with adults and this is about a bunch of teenagers. Not to say they don’t have heart and raunch, but there tends to be even more thinking with the genitals when it comes to teens which gets old fast. In the case of “gotta lose my virginity,” it’s certainly an admirable concept to cover…I’m just tired of seeing it covered in the exact same way repeatedly.
This film does try to mix it up with the ol’ handheld camera trick, which I do give it props for. At least it tried to be different and for some films a camera shift (Cloverfield, The Last Exorcism [which this film has the same writer/director team behind this film as that one…odd]) is all it needed. Unfortunately much like a high definition audio and video track, comedies are much simpler film types and tossing in a bunch of unnecessary flash and flare doesn’t get you to a better product in the end. It adds something to the mix, but the over incorporation of YouTube into the story also makes it feel like some kind of tale against recording everything (everything) you do as you’ll…become a YouTube sensation? Or something. I don’t know. This movie tries for a lot of things in its hour and a half run time and while it’s something that could definitely happen in today’s world with every phone carrying a camera now, it just doesn’t seem like something that’s very likely to happen too often.
I will say the cast of unknowns made it feel more realistic than it probably would have with some bigger stars on the other end of the lens, but I have to say it…just didn’t work for me. I think because I’d seen it done before and better that the handheld camera angle just didn’t’ work as good this time around.
Overall a film that’s a strict Rental. There are some decent jokes (which are, of course, poop related in nature—I’m easy, what can I say?) but in the end this just isn’t a film that I want to come back to, although I can certainly see where they tried.
The DVD
Sony releases The Virginity Hit to DVD and it arrives in a standard amaray style DVD case without any fancy inserts or anything; the extras are pretty decent, but I’ll get to those in a second. Video for this film looks clean and clear and what you’d expect from a modern production (though perhaps a bit murkier due to the handheld nature) and the DD5.1 audio brings to life the sounds of teenagers looking for sex in surround sound. That sounds strange, but there are crowd scenes and the like so there’s some directional play, though not much.
Extras include:
Commentary with Filmmakers’ and Cast
Screen Test with Matt and Zack
Zack’s Online Audition for FunnyorDie
Line-O-Rama
Jersey Girl
The commentary was surprisingly good, but that’s probably because it had quite a few participants to keep it lively. The remainder of the extras had their moments as well and the line-o-rama actually opened my eyes to how unscripted this whole thing was—I thought it would have more direction than it did, but it seemed like the actors had a lot of room to play and explore (which was further discussed on the commentary, of course). Overall worth a Rental but nothing more.
The Virginity Hit is now available on DVD.