'Project X' starts with a familiar but very timeless concept: ordinary, marginal John or Jane Doe hatches a "foolproof" plan to make a big splash and "become someone" overnight. It's a fantasy firmly anchored in the American imagination when proud rugged individualism clashes with the need to belong to something greater. The trope is particularly powerful among adolescents, who aren't yet fully attuned to the adult consequences of adult-scale actions or the potential for a situation to get out of hand, and we've all heard about the discrete kid deciding to throw a wild party while his parents are gone for the weekend, in the hopes of landing a spot in the "in-crowd" and maybe humiliating the alpha persecutor (the Cocky Blond Guy or Nasty Cheerleader) along the way, while scoring the ultimate bomb of the opposite sex (the potential to bang the chick of one's choice being, of course, the primary motivation for males to get "in").
The thing is, this sort of situation depends on the backdrop of a kind of a sleepy, cohesive and (ironically) "wholesome" neighborhood tissue to support the public high school from whence the host and the guests are drawn. By 2012, what with increasing ethnic and social fragmentation in the American landscape - especially in large urban conglomerates (this one is set in Pasadena) - this adolescent dynamic already seemed dated, and 'Project X' is not a period piece. Watching it just a few years later, after the Obergefell ruling and the instauration of "Drag Queen Story Hour," the movie looks even more naïve, the creators drawing their inspiration from the high-school dynamics of their memories projected into their day and blissfully unaware of how the ongoing social revolutions were rendering it impossible to continue.
Some may find it odd that I should characterize as "naïve" a picture depicting casual use of ecstasy, an army of young, topless roses jumping in the pool, underage characters engaging in foreplay, scatological accidents, the most sexually racy rap lyrics imaginable and even girl-on-girl face-sucking. That *was* long the reality for *certain* wild middle-/upper-middle-class adolescent/young-adult parties - though perhaps not in *quite* the concentrations depicted here and less and less every year for quite some time. Not only does it happen less often, but also, we're all jaded. Nowadays the biggest controversies even in those demographics seem to be over political correctness rather than sex or drugs. This isn't an edgy film by any means, the proof being that it was fine depicting lesbian filigrees but not male-on-male sexual activity (a similar film made today almost certainly would have, but that is not edgy in the current context however much the critics would argue it is).
So is it a comedy? A drama? A coming-of-age story? 'Project X' wants to be all these, but is more than anything an exercise in un-self-conscious wish fulfillment which leans too much on the grandiosity of a spectacle that wasn't even shocking anymore by the time it was made, at the expense of clever comedic timing. Furthermore, the film takes itself too seriously: its adolescent protagonists assign disproportionate importance to their current social repertoire, as adolescents often do, yet this is never sent up or satired in any way.
All that said, the film is not a total loss. The cinematography is top-notch: the filmmakers work the cinéma vérité style to perfection and the director draws out awesome party energy. It's about as close to being simultaneously cinematic and documentary as one could reasonably hope for. The actors portraying the lead buddy trio put a great deal of heart into their roles, and despite their cocky attitudes, total lack of discernment and crass adolescent mouths prove themselves as devoted and caring of friends as anyone could want, something that was lost on a lot of contemporary critics hung up on feminism and dainties and forgetting the age-old lesson not to give too much importance to appearances.
One will of course need to suspend disbelief to project a 1995's American society with 2012 technology, to believe that adolescent girls would willingly flash themselves at a huge mixed party in front of unhidden cameras just because adolescent boys asked and to accept, for no reason other than the script calling for it, that Kirby Bliss Blanton could be any less tempting a score for the birthday boy than Alexis Knapp. But if you can just play along, it's a fun little ride into a wild night - as well as a good reminder of how far NOT to go when partying - and you'll be rooting for the birthday boy despite the silliness of this project and entirely predictable catasrophe he and his friends are courting. The film was remade in France two years later as 'Le Babysitting' with an adult cast, a reversal of the social-climbing dynamic, a less cataclysmic dénoument and much better comedic timing: despite its far-out premise the remake was overall more plausible. But it's worth checking out the original.
The thing is, this sort of situation depends on the backdrop of a kind of a sleepy, cohesive and (ironically) "wholesome" neighborhood tissue to support the public high school from whence the host and the guests are drawn. By 2012, what with increasing ethnic and social fragmentation in the American landscape - especially in large urban conglomerates (this one is set in Pasadena) - this adolescent dynamic already seemed dated, and 'Project X' is not a period piece. Watching it just a few years later, after the Obergefell ruling and the instauration of "Drag Queen Story Hour," the movie looks even more naïve, the creators drawing their inspiration from the high-school dynamics of their memories projected into their day and blissfully unaware of how the ongoing social revolutions were rendering it impossible to continue.
Some may find it odd that I should characterize as "naïve" a picture depicting casual use of ecstasy, an army of young, topless roses jumping in the pool, underage characters engaging in foreplay, scatological accidents, the most sexually racy rap lyrics imaginable and even girl-on-girl face-sucking. That *was* long the reality for *certain* wild middle-/upper-middle-class adolescent/young-adult parties - though perhaps not in *quite* the concentrations depicted here and less and less every year for quite some time. Not only does it happen less often, but also, we're all jaded. Nowadays the biggest controversies even in those demographics seem to be over political correctness rather than sex or drugs. This isn't an edgy film by any means, the proof being that it was fine depicting lesbian filigrees but not male-on-male sexual activity (a similar film made today almost certainly would have, but that is not edgy in the current context however much the critics would argue it is).
So is it a comedy? A drama? A coming-of-age story? 'Project X' wants to be all these, but is more than anything an exercise in un-self-conscious wish fulfillment which leans too much on the grandiosity of a spectacle that wasn't even shocking anymore by the time it was made, at the expense of clever comedic timing. Furthermore, the film takes itself too seriously: its adolescent protagonists assign disproportionate importance to their current social repertoire, as adolescents often do, yet this is never sent up or satired in any way.
All that said, the film is not a total loss. The cinematography is top-notch: the filmmakers work the cinéma vérité style to perfection and the director draws out awesome party energy. It's about as close to being simultaneously cinematic and documentary as one could reasonably hope for. The actors portraying the lead buddy trio put a great deal of heart into their roles, and despite their cocky attitudes, total lack of discernment and crass adolescent mouths prove themselves as devoted and caring of friends as anyone could want, something that was lost on a lot of contemporary critics hung up on feminism and dainties and forgetting the age-old lesson not to give too much importance to appearances.
One will of course need to suspend disbelief to project a 1995's American society with 2012 technology, to believe that adolescent girls would willingly flash themselves at a huge mixed party in front of unhidden cameras just because adolescent boys asked and to accept, for no reason other than the script calling for it, that Kirby Bliss Blanton could be any less tempting a score for the birthday boy than Alexis Knapp. But if you can just play along, it's a fun little ride into a wild night - as well as a good reminder of how far NOT to go when partying - and you'll be rooting for the birthday boy despite the silliness of this project and entirely predictable catasrophe he and his friends are courting. The film was remade in France two years later as 'Le Babysitting' with an adult cast, a reversal of the social-climbing dynamic, a less cataclysmic dénoument and much better comedic timing: despite its far-out premise the remake was overall more plausible. But it's worth checking out the original.