Film Review: Miss March
If you’re set on seeing the brutally unfunny comedy Miss March, do yourself a favor and leave your brain at home. It will be overloaded by too many questions.
Not the stimulating questions about society’s perception of morality and tolerance one might have at the end of Milk and other high-quality films, but frustrating questions. Does anyone really thinks epilepsy jokes are hilarious? Why would Hugh Hefner put his fine name behind such an awful film? And most pressing: Who the hell financed this horror show in the first place?
Miss March’s premise sounds promising enough (it should be tough to mess up a plot that’s ripped straight from both Road Trip and a classic ’80s tune), and the movie was written by and stars Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore of the Internet sketch group Whitest Kids U Know, who don’t usually produce stuff this horrible.
Senior prom is approaching, and abstinence-addict Eugene Bell (Cregger) makes the big decision to finally do it with longtime girlfriend Cindi Whitehall (Raquel Alessi). Unfortunately, on the big night he also happens to get drunk for what appears to be his first time and subsequently falls down a flight of stairs and into a four-year coma. When he wakes up, Cindi is long gone and no longer chaste but burning up the centerfold of Playboy.
Although Eugene has lost his girl, he still has Tucker Cleigh (Moore), his best friend and possibly the most annoying character I’ve ever seen on screen — and this is coming from someone who has watched all of the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flicks. In what couldn’t have been a good idea at the time, Tucker is fashioned as a Jim Carrey circa-1997 knockoff times 100, from the floppy hair and bug eyes to the full wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts. But where Jim Carrey is inexplicably endearing, Tucker is simply a human penis, so aggravating you wish he’d just get chlamydia already.
At Tucker’s urging, he and Eugene head across the country to the Playboy mansion to win Cindi back. Along the way they’re pursued by bloodthirsty firefighters and meet up with old friend Horsedick.MPEG (Craig Robinson, in a role that must have been fun but is a giant leap down from his “The Office” character Darryl Philbin).
The ending is sweet though predictable — 10 points if you’ve got it figured out already — but this journey is not worth the ride. The ridiculous firefighters are the movie’s most original plot device if you don’t count the scene in which a hoochie gets bounced out an RV window. Tucker’s mouth drops for a full 15 seconds, which is the perfect amount to allow for uproarious audience laughter but — oops — the creators forgot to make the scene funny. Crammed in between these gems are more excrement jokes than a preteen boy could love, stupid women, and an epileptic girlfriend who gets stabbed in the head. Oh, and there’s also some hot Russian lesbians. Somehow the writers screwed that up too and created a disturbing pair of nymphomaniacs who aren’t the least bit sexy. Yeah, quite the feat.
Eugene and Cindi are Miss March’s most likable characters, but she gets roughly 10 minutes of screen time and he loses all of his appeal once he takes Tucker back after (understandably) treating him with contempt for most of the film. Whatever.
The best advice I can give to someone who is considering this movie is to take $7.50, burn it, and save yourself two hours. You’re welcome.