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Dustin's Review

The Virginity Hit  (2010)
½ Star
Directed by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland.
Cast: Matt Bennett, Zack Pearlman, Jacob Davich, Justin Kline, Nicole Weaver, Krysta Rodriguez, Harry Zittel, Savannah Welch, Tina Parker, Sunny Leone, Daniel Weber, Ramona Tyler, Bernard Hocke, Seth Barrish.
2010 – 87 minutes
Rated: Rated R (for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, and drug use).
Reviewed by Dustin Putman, September 10, 2010.
In the case of their feature directorial debut "The Virginity Hit," Funny or Die web site creators Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland have no choice but to sign their own death warrants. A combination of "American Pie," "The Blair Witch Project" and crap, the film is made up of 87 minutes' worth of faux YouTube videos all shot by obsessive teenage voyeur Zack (Zack Pearlman) as he and fellow deflowered friends Jacob (Jacob Davich) and Justin (Justin Kline) attempt to get his gawky adopted brother Matt (Matt Bennett) laid for the first time. These aren't entertaining YouTube videos, either, but the kind that you might click on, watch five seconds of, get immediately annoyed, and quickly close out of. Unfortunately, prospective viewers won't have that choice, and they'll pay dearly with an hour and a half of their precious lives they will never be able to get back.

Making a pact that they will each lose their virginity and celebrate the occasions afterward with a hit from their bong, high school pals Jacob, Zack and Justin each follow through over the course of a few months. Things are all set for Matt to be next, but the plan goes awry after he discovers girlfriend Nicole (Nicole Weaver) cheated on him at a frat party. After a messy break-up, Matt is egged into a series of further botched attempts, from potential internet hookup Savannah (Savannah Welch), to professional porn star Sunny Leone (playing herself), to adoptive sister Krysta (Krysta Rodriguez). As much as writer-directors Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland (who also penned the script for the much better "The Last Exorcism") would like there to be, hilarity does not ensue.

Crass verging on detestable, "The Virginity Hit" is a particularly ugly experience that one feels downright unclean watching. No one will confuse it for authentic footage, but it is treated as such, and if these deplorable, brain-dead teens posing as protagonists are a testament to what their generation is like, we are all in terrible trouble. Expecting any of the characters to have a moral compass of any sort is a lost cause. Believing that there might be an underlying sweetness and truth to go along with the raunchiness, a 'la 1982's "The Last American Virgin," 1999's "American Pie" and 2008's "Sex Drive," is nothing but a setup for disappointment. Instead, they treat sex with an alarming flippancy, they binge drink and take recreational drugs out in the open of their own homes as their parents turn a blind eye, they attend the sort of parties one might expect at the Playboy Mansion, and they think nothing of committing one crime after another, from theft—Matt and friends steal a Ralph Lauren suit priced at over $1K—to breaking and entering. How any of these obnoxious, snotty-nosed, pimply-faced dweebs are capable of nabbing a girl to have sex with is just one of many leaps toward the wish-fulfillment fantasy realm. Either that, or New Orleans is a hotbed for severely desperate women with low self-esteem.

Irritating enough to be a chore to sit through and exempt of a single genuinely amusing moment, the picture is made up of nothing but wall-to-wall smuttiness and wrong-headed messages that serve to only cement how immature the characters are. Matt is intended to be the underdog of the piece—he is given a sad-sack backstory wherein Zack's parents took him in after his mother died of cancer when he was little—but no reason is given for why we should like or care about him. Quiet and awkward, Matt is more or less a spectator within his own story, so charmless and free of charisma that he is impossible to get a firm handle on. Indeed, sometimes he is such a non-entity it is as if he's not even on the screen. He and friends Zack, Jacob and Justin are all shallow individuals who do not apparently have any hobbies, interests, aspirations, or thoughts in their puny little heads outside of sex. None of them discuss their futures—they are eighteen, but no mention is made of college—and they are never seen going to school, studying, or doing anything outside of what is hedonistically related to the flimsy plot.

What, finally, is the message "The Virginity Hit" imparts on the audience? That it is okay to forgive your ex-girlfriend for a mistake she made only after you get even by sucking on a porn star's breasts. That's what Matt does, and it's actually accepted as the right thing to do. Like clockwork, Matt gets back together with Nicole in every sense of the term and stupidly claims that they are in love. Cue the bong hit. Something tells me their relationship is not going to survive such skewed logic. "The Virginity Hit" is irresponsible and patently awful in just about every way, and only newcomer Nicole Weaver, who could be appealing in a better movie, escapes relatively unscathed. The rest, from the smarmy writing to the abrasive performances to the corner-cutting cinematography to the very absence of a heart within its hollow chest, is excessively amateurish. If given the choice between suffering through "The Virginity Hit" again and contracting an STD, I'd happily take my chances with the latter.
© 2010 by Dustin Putman
Dustin Putman