Well... it was in focus. The sound was clear, it was well lit, and the camera didn't shake. Sadly, that pretty much is all that the filmmakers got right with this painfully unfunny attempt at a comedy.
I should make it clear that I have no problem with "gross out" humor and, in fact, I think there should be no limits and nothing is distasteful... if it's done right. I am not offended by vomit jokes, sex jokes, or any other kind of crude jokes... so long as they are actually funny. Directors, from Mel Brooks to the Zucker and Farrelly brothers to Seth MacFarlane and countless other have proved that filthy scatological gross jokes can work when they're done right.
But director Shane Dawson seems to think that just putting something that seems shocking or offensive on film is enough to be funny. It seems as if he felt that all he had to do was come up with an outrageous set up scene and the jokes would write themselves... but they don't. For example, I'm sure he thought it would be funny to have a key scene set in a public bathroom with the characters communicating through a glory hole. Perhaps with some sharp dialog or with a performance that wasn't cartoonishly over the top and grating, it might have worked. Instead, since, like so many scenes in this film, it relies solely on the set up and provides no punchline, this scene falls flat. This kind of painfully unfunny attempt at comedy makes films like "Meet the Spartans" look like comic masterpieces by comparison.
The best analogy I can give is to say a comedian can make a funny fart joke that will make an audience laugh... while an immature child thinks the act of farting itself is funny enough. This film was directed by an immature child.
The lack of actual humor and the paint-by the-numbers storyline could be overlooked, and the film could just serve as a mild distraction for ninety minutes, if it were not for the horrible performances of the two male leads. Director Shane Dawson miscast himself as the male lead and also cast his equally untalented androgynous friend Drew Monson as the other male lead, their two stories somehow overlapping. Remembering your lines and hitting your mark is NOT all there is to acting. That Shane Dawson spends many scenes opposite Cherami Leigh, a young woman who can actually act, only highlights how out of his depths he is. That neither actor is able to demonstrate that they are actually interested in any of the women their characters are supposed to be obsessed with is the least of their performance problems.
I'm sure there are plenty of 12-year-old children who may giggle at some of these scenes, provided this is the first R-rated comedy they've ever seen. But for the rest of us... we won't be offended by the vulgarity as it's nothing new... we'll just be offended that this many people put so much money and effort into making something so completely unfunny.
