So both the weekend before and the weekend after I watched Snakes on a Plane I managed to catch a screwball comedy. The movie that I saw before was the PG-13 teen comedy Accepted. The movie I saw the weekend after was the R-rated Broken Lizard comedy Beerfest. Both movies had some similarities, and some obvious differences. I want to discuss both movies, and then my views on these sorts of comedies in general. Let’s get started with Accepted. I liked this movie. It was just fun. It wasn’t a spectacular movie (it wasn’t nearly as good as Wedding Crashers or Dodgeball, for example), but if you like that sort of goofy comedy, it’s certainly worth taking the time to see. I have to say, though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie more blatantly filmed as an R-rated movie and then edited down to PG-13 for the theatrical release. One scene in particular really jumped out at me. Everyone at the college is hanging out at the pool having a big pool party. You see three hotties in bikinis painting their bodies, and then one of them starts to remove her top. Just as she’s got it untied in front, the camera cuts to a different scene and we move on. As soon as I saw how the scene was edited, I immediately thought, “What do you want to bet we get to see her tits when the unrated version comes out on DVD.” I mean, you pretty much expect them to do that sort of thing nowadays with this kind of comedy (especially after The Dukes of Hazzard came out on DVD with the big disclaimer on the front of the unrated version stating boldly that it included nudity and drug use), but still, when it’s that blatant you just have to laugh.
Accepted is basically you standard slacker makes good movie. We see a guy who’s pretty much coasted through high school who ends up being turned down by every college he applies to. Since Mommy & Daddy are dead set on him going to college, he does what any scheming slacker would do – he makes up a college. However, when his best friend sets up the website for the college for the guy to show to his parents, he makes it too well, and suddenly all sorts of other slackers and misfits who couldn’t get into any real colleges start showing up at the fake college that the slacker and his friends put together. Hilarity ensues from there, including the standard battle with the snooty elitists from the real college nearby that of course ends up with the evil frat boys exposing the slacker's scheme to everyone. I won’t give away the ending, but suffice it to say, it will hardly come as a surprise when you see it. But let’s face it, you’re not looking to be surprised when you go to see a movie like this. These sorts of comedies stick to a tried-and-true formula for a reason – because the formula works.
Accepted has a number of great laughs, and is risqué without getting raunchy like most of your R-rated comedies do these days. I’ll be really interested to see what sort of DVD release we see for this one. I’m seriously expecting an unrated version, but the big question will be how unrated it actually is, and how much additional footage gets put back in for the unrated release.
And on the subject of more uncensored comedies, we have the other comedy that I saw at the theater recently, the R-rated comedy Beerfest. As far as humor goes, I think I liked Accepted better, but this was still a pretty funny movie (and it has a fair amount of nudity, which is always a plus). Sadly like most R-rated comedies these days, it has a few gross out scenes that I could have done without (some of which were admittedly mildly amusing, but were still more gross than they were funny). This is one of the reasons I so loved Wedding Crashers, because it was the rare modern sex comedy that was R-rated but did NOT have any truly disgusting scenes in it meant to be funny. For fans of Broken Lizard, this movie is probably right up your alley. I actually liked it more than I liked Super Troopers, their first movie (of course, I didn’t like Super Troopers nearly as much as a lot of people I know did, so maybe that’s just me).
So this brings me to my discussion of comedies, most specifically your juvenile teen comedies. With the success of such R-rated comedies as Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I’m wondering if we’ll be seeing more movies that are outright R-rated from the start when they hit theaters, or movies that are edited down to be PG-13 and then very quickly returned to their R-rated version (but left “unrated” because that’s such a popular buzz word with DVDs these days) when they’re released on DVD, such as what they did with The Dukes of Hazzard. Being something of a fan of R-rated comedies (for the most part), I certainly wouldn’t complain about this at all. One thing I do have to say, though, is that it’s nice to see that R-rated comedies seem to be getting back to the style of the classics of the 80s, when it was all about a healthy dose of T & A combined with some light-hearted fun, as opposed to the numerous R-rated comedies of the 90s where nudity was suddenly at a minimum, but gross out “humor” as they liked to call it was all the rage (I’m sorry, but while I did enjoy American Pie, I really don’t consider seeing a guy jerk off into a glass of beer only to have some other guy unknowingly drink it afterwards to really be that funny. Call me old fashioned). It will be interesting to see what the comedies of the next few years have to offer us.
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