On his 21st birthday, two of medical student Jeff’s old friends, Miller and Casey, appear to take him out for a night of now-legal drinking. However, when Jeff drinks himself unconscious, the pair realise they don’t actually know where he lives and must criss-cross around town to find someone who can point them in the right direction and get Jeff back home before his important interview the next day.
That 21 & Over’s main selling point was “From the writers of The Hangover speaks volumes about what to expect, even if you ignore the fact that as general rule nobody gives a crap about writers unless they’re Aaron Sorkin, Shane Black or Joss Whedon. The Hangover II’s unapologetic rehash of its predecessor showed just how difficult it was to recapture the original’s bottled lightning, and so it’s something of a disappointment that 21 & Over follows a similar construction: an episodically structured, increasingly desperate search after a night of drunken debauchery before an important event the next morning, with a swift 11th hour resolution via a eureka moment derived from a minor character’s comment on something unrelated. What plot there actually is takes a while to get underway, making you wonder if there’s even going to be one, and before that the group’s escapades consist mostly of a series of choppily edited montages soundtracked by some god-awful rap music.
The characters are little more than basic and unimaginative archetypes: Miller is the annoying smart-arse who doesn’t know when to shut up, Casey is the sensible one whose attempts at reason get ignored, and Jeff would probably be the overachieving Asian if he were awake or sober long enough to give this impression. The people they encounter over the course of the film are the usual crowd consisting of the intelligent and hot-but-not-slutty girl, her obnoxious boyfriend with his sycophantic followers, a cool old guy and an anonymous assortment of drunks, stoners and cute girls in varying states of undress.
The circumstances escalate as the trio get themselves into increasingly contrived situations, often involving the random and antagonistic recurring appearances of the aforementioned boyfriend, Jeff’s strict and perpetually disapproving father, and a sorority of Hispanics hunting them across town seeking vengeance. There are even a few racial stereotypes thrown in, and so lazily invoked it’s as though they’re being ticked off a checklist.
There is an attempt made to meditate on how childhood friendships often waver as you get older, and as life takes you in different directions you may reach the point where you realise you may no longer know your friends as well as you once did. However such meaningful introspection gets lost amongst the parade of dick jokes, gratuitous nudity, (literal) toilet humour and slow-motion projectile vomiting.
Overall Verdict: Mildly entertaining but ultimately unfulfilling, 21 & Over offers nothing different from what you’ve seen a dozen times before in similar, far funnier, films.
Special Features:
Levels of Intoxication
Tower of Power
Gag Reel
Reviewer: Andrew Marshall