We're in London! What should we do? There's the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace... [pause] and no drinking age.

There you go.

Eurotrip was odd. It had the sort of underlying sensitivity that makes the American Pie movies great, but it didn't have their charm. The primary story arc was sort of sweet, but it was filled with ridiculousness - kind of like a bunch of Saturday Night Live skits strung together. There are lots of movies that feel like that, but unlike most this one mostly worked. I think it works in a fragile way though. The whole thing is mostly just a parade of bad stereotypes, so it's easy to offend. And it's mostly low brow humor. The good side is they mostly stay away from gross out humor and keep everything in the realm of uncomfortable or akward situations (there are disturbing things, but it's not focues around body function like a lot of low brow humor is.)

What is a bit suprising is for a movie that is so obviously targeted at teens there is a huge amount of sex and nudity. I guess it's not suprising, but I was taken aback by how blatant it was. This is clearly a movie targetted at late high school boys - many of the scenes really come straight out the psyche of a guy that age. I think that's part of why I laughed more then Wendy. In the end that's probably why I enjoyed it, it was like a cheap trip back in time to those teenage guy years - where the world exists in a completely different way. I want to be really clear that I do not consider this movie a trancendental experience or anything - I'm just rationalizing why I had a good time. Of course, it could also be that I still have the maturity of a high school boy, in the end it's probably a little of both.

Side note: Donny's band plays a great song called "Scotty doesn't know" that reappears throughout the movie. On the way out Wendy noted that Matt Damon looked good all punked out (playing Donny.) I thought she was full of it but ended up losing the bet - it is in fact Matt Damon doing a very off cameo role.

Still want more?
Read the Archives!