BEHAVING BADLY (2014)

Genre: Comedy
Director: Tim Garrick
Cast: Nat Wolff, Selena Gomez, Mary-Louise Parker, Elisabeth Shue, Dylan McDermott, Jason Lee, Heather Graham
RunTime: 1 hr 37 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Sexual References)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/behavingbadlyfilm

Opening Day: 10 July 2014

Synopsis: In this outrageous comedy, Rick is willing to do whatever it takes to try and win the heart of Nina. Even if this means having to go to a Josh Groban concert. But Josh isn't the only thing standing in his way. He'll also have to deal with strippers, his best friend's horny mother, the local mob, his drug abusing boss, a perverted principal, a priest with a really big secret, and his own suicidal mother if he ever hopes of landing the girl of his dreams. No one ever said love was easy!

Movie Review:

Every once in a while, a new film comes along that tries to be the touchstone of American teen sex comedies, a la ‘American Pie’. Many though have come and gone without so much as leaving a blip on the cultural radar, and this adaptation of Ric Browde novel ‘While I’m Dead…Feed the Dog’ looks set to join the pile in that graveyard. Painfully unfunny and terribly leaden, first-time director Tim Garrick throws every spanner into the works to try to cobble something that resembles humour, but it is clear right from the get-go that something (and indeed everything) feels off.

Told mostly in flashback from the point of view of our lead protagonist Rick Stevens (who also provides the occasional voiceover), it is at its heart a story of a shy awkward kid who tries to get it on with a girl at school who is clearly out of his league – in this case, that girl happens also to be the smartest whiz kid in class, Nina Pennington. As fools often do, Rick accepts a bet from a creepy looking dude in school to get a date with Nina within two weeks; and because the dude is the son of a Lithuanian mobster, Rick has no choice but to follow through with it.

We know it takes a fair suspension of disbelief to think that a Lithuanian mobster could actually be among one of the families living in suburban Los Angeles, but that’s not the (only) reason why this film plainly sucks. Besides said mobster by the surname of Malinauskas, we also get to meet Nina’s jealous ex who happens (stereotypically) to be a jock, a nymphomaniac MILF who is also mother to Rick’s best friend Billy Bender, a sister who is a stripper but somehow manages to get a place at Stanford, a brother who is a gym rat and turns out to be gay, and the local Catholic church who is somehow caught up in mob business.

With such a hodgepodge of plotlines, Garrick practically throws all semblance and logic out of the window, flitting from one story strand to another without so much as bothering about conventional elements of tone and pacing. We get that it is meant to be outrageous and raunchy, but there is a difference between trying too hard to be funny and actually being funny; in this case, there’s hardly any doubt that Garrick falls squarely on the former. To make matters worse, there isn’t a single redeeming factor to any of the characters – where at least we knew most of them in ‘American Pie’ to be sweet and good-natured, those here are simply weird, obnoxious, socially maladjusted, and pretentious.

More unforgiveable is how Garrick – who also adapted the movie with Scott Russell – singlehandedly squanders the talents of notable Hollywood stars like Elisabeth Shue, Heather Graham, Jason Lee, Dylan McDermott and Mary Louise-Parker. It is unclear in the first place what compelled these actors to sign up, but none of them get anything more than a thankless supporting part that rises above the point of embarrassment – most prominently, Shue, who we think takes the cake for humiliation by being made to get turned on with an eggbeater on a kitchen floor.

It’s also safe to say that none of the teen stars will get a career boost from this mess. If Nat Wolff looks familiar, that’s because you’ve probably noticed him as Augustus Waters’ best friend in this summer’s breakout hit ‘The Fault in Our Stars’; unfortunately, his turn as lead is probably more alienating than his supporting part in the latter film. Selena Gomez plays the same goody-two-shoes as she always does in her role as Nina, and manages to retain her Disney princess largely unscathed save for the occasional F-word. The less said about the rest of the supporting teen cast the better, who should probably not include this movie on their resume.

Even as a chronicle of teenage shenanigans, ‘Behaving Badly’ flounders with a collection of lame gags and even duller characters. As such comedies often do, it tries to up the raunch factor with one display of masturbation and several other sight gags involving pole dancing and MILF seduction; but this one goes even further to try to throw in a mini-Godfather like tale into the mix. It’s an atrocious mess to say the least – this much, we can say, it’s no ‘American Pie’ and never will be. 

Movie Rating:

(Bad is the perfect descriptor for this collection of lame and unfunny gags that try too hard to be raunchy)

Review by Gabriel Chong