"Mardi Gras" makes the audacious choice of putting its worst scene at the beginning: you know how sex comedies have to start with a big set piece, one huge laugh that pulls you in and never lets you go? Well, "Mardi Gras" starts with an elderly couple we'll never see again remembering their first Mardi Gras, which very predictably turns into an overly explicit conversation about sex. I've seen and heard some horrid things in this subgenre, but an elderly woman literally just describing how her husband ejaculated on her breasts, without an actual joke in sight? Not how you lure me in. It's only like a thirty- second vignette, but it easily feels like thirty minutes. Who writes this and honestly thinks he's struck gold? Oh, we'll get two elderly actors and write some sex-related words on a napkin, maybe it'll be funny by accident. It won't.
I'm glad to say that's the only cringe-inducing scene in the movie, it doesn't have laugh-out-loud moments but I got through it fairly well. "Mardi Gras" is hurt though by the fact that its plot just hobbles along. It starts of with two losers who can't get a girlfriend (not saying "boobs" in every sentence could help), then they turn on the TV and it's a report on Mardi Gras in New Orleans. So uh...let's go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans! If that's all the effort you're going to do to set this up, why not just start the movie at Mardi Gras? The lack of stakes also makes it difficult to connect: Bret Harrison was a believable nerd in "Grounded For Life", but even there he got the girl fairly quickly. We're honestly supposed to buy him as a desperate, 25-year-old virgin? Would have made a lot more sense to reserve that subplot for the obese friend who's desperately trying to be Jonah Hill. The movie quickly deteriorates into a collection of barely related sketches, which are occasionally good for a chuckle but never add anything to the meager story.
There is a saving grace though: Nicholas D'Agosto and Arielle Kebbel have a very natural style in their acting, and though their story is highly predictable it didn't really bother me. They both have likable characters, which is kind of a rarity in "American Pie" rip- offs. Hell, most of them don't even have characters. They really have great chemistry, I wish the movie didn't waste that much time in Carmen Electra's (does she ever refuse a role?) hotel room or showing not Jonah Hill naked. Come on not Jonah Hill, I'm trying to have popcorn here. "Mardi Gras" isn't a great movie, but it's not a completely brainless sex comedy either.
