Miss March (2009)

© Fox Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

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Director:	Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore
Writers:	Zach Cregger
Cast:	Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore, Raquel Alessi, Molly Stanton, Tanjareen Martin, Holly Hindman, Craig Robinson, Alexis Raben
Released:	Friday, March 13, 2009
Length:	89 minutes
Studio:	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Genre:	Comedy
Rating:	Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Synopsis

Miss March © Fox Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Miss March is an irreverent coming-of-age comedy about Eugene, a young man who wakes up from a coma to discover that his once innocent high school sweetheart has become a Playboy? Playmate. Together with his best friend Tucker, the hapless virgin embarks on a cross-country road trip to win his ex back by crashing a party at the legendary Playboy Mansion.

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Miss March DVD Review

The title comes from the story. There are two high school buddies: one an uptight virgin who badly preaches, on abstinence and is celibate with his lovely, Raquel Alessi, girlfriend -- the other dumb-and-dumber. When the "good" or maybe just "average" buddy is about to have sex for the first time, he falls down the stairs, goes into a coma for 4 years, and awakens to find that his formerly chaste girlfriend is now a Playboy bunny (March edition) at the Playboy mansion. They travel cross country, being chased by murderous firemen because the dumb one stabbed his former girlfriend in the face with a fork, and she has a firefighter brother.

That, guys, does not nearly do it justice. Basically, the levels of stupidity, crudity, and some general meanness are hard to encode in one paragraph, and I am not especially about reliving the experience to go into it all here. I would prefer not to revisit the 'endless' hilarity in that the sane guy can't, after being in a coma for 4 years, control his bowels; so every time something stressful happens, there's a nasty noise and a cut scene. If this was a movie for 9-year-olds, I would get it, but it is rated R.

Miss March has 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. That is not literally in a class by itself, but it almost is. My thought -- I couldn't find a review that liked it, and I really want to. Who is that guy!? As is so often the case with movies that are catastrophically bad, the core issue comes when the creators are unable to see their work the way the viewer does (at 4%, I am in the majority, I hope). In this case, the "cool friend" (who is the stupid, and although generally hapless emotionally abusive one) is meant to carry the movie's humor.

The comatose character is tragic. When he wakes up, his dad mysteriously wants nothing to do with him and drops his first phone call for a work-call from Japan. Yet judgmental, he is furious with his ex-girlfriend for not standing by him eternally, and "gasp" -- sleeping with other men. The other stupid guy -- the driving force -- gets his trying-to-be-romantic-girlfriend a stripper pole for their first date anniversary. His idea is to take her to a fancy restaurant, make a fool of himself, and then ditch on the check! When she is unimpressed, he badgers her into stripping; and she says "yes" because the script thinks he is an all right guy. Of course, he has flashing lights so when she has an epileptic fit, he stabs her in the face with a fork.

Okay, I did relive some of it. I choose not to go into their rap-star friend, and is incredibly misogynistic -- which the script thinks is cool. The friend has slept with Miss March, but the movie doesn't think it is all that cool, and becomes an antagonist to the characters – which, again, the movie does not think is cool), and then turns out to have a hidden embarrassing disfigurement -- which the movie thinks is riotously funny!

Huh--well, I did that too.

In my quest to find people who liked Miss March, I went to IMDB and looked at the comments. I was not disappointed – well maybe I was. The guys who liked it were not coherent. But I did get this exchange:

Sloanrules is surprised:
God I love this movie, I thought it was hilarious, especially the dude with the long hair hahahaha, he made me laugh, can't believe ppl are so harsh with the ratings ....it deserves higher than 4.9 ...

raf696 agrees: Dude, I totally agree. I thought it was quite funny as well. Maybe not the funniest I've ever seen, but I totally gave it a 7. Maybe people were expecting much more nudity, judging by the title, and the nudity was actually moderate.

Katmandu is in synch with:
I totally agree with both you guys -- and yes, a 7 would have been good.

But The Marwood has something for them:
It got a 7 on metacritic -- out of 100.

-- Marco Chacon

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