Having seen project X twice now I feel like I can comment on it with a clear head. I walked into this movie with little to no expectation or understanding of what I was about to see and came away so incredibly shell shocked that pieces of it stuck in my brain almost like I was there. My jaw was solidly on the floor for most of the second half and I only came out of my shocked state of overdose as the film was wrapping up. I wanted to come at the film from a more logical angle as the rest of the night after my first viewing my brain was making connections and attaching bits of the film to other films in the house party genre.
Just out of curiosity I wiki'd the movie and am not entirely unsurprised by it's critical reception. Critics tend to dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel elevated and this movie has no desire to elevate anyone. If you have ever gotten drunk or attended a party with more than twenty people over the age of 15 and under the age of 40 then you have a general idea of why critics would hate this film. Hard to love something like "The Blind Side" and even attempt to make a case for something like Project X, which in my opinion is one of the things I like about the film. Unlike most found footage films that try to "place" the camera within the narrative so the characters can ignore it or the audience can basically forget about it, Project X is completely obsessed with it's camera's and by extension fame, from the first frame to the last frame. The whole driving goal of all three of the main characters is to drown themselves in either prestige or infamy and they genuinely do not care which. And in today's celebrity/fame obsessed society I found it incredibly refreshing to see teenage characters that behaved less like adults with smaller bodies and more like actual teenagers. We're talking about the generation that invented sack tapping, they have worse things to worry about then being "likeable". These kids were born with the internet and knowing that your Facebook page can get you on the news, and your life is always public, fame is more than a job for today's youth, it's a wide spread epidemic fed by every aspect of their life.
After my second viewing of the film I am of two minds. The first viewing made me feel like the film had chosen a direction and a conclusion that was going to cement the whole narrative far above other movies in this genre. The found footage aspect makes it easy to suspend disbelief as the party gets further and further out of control, and for the most part the film does a decent job not only creating an epic party experience but laying out the consequences of what should happen if Thomas and his friends get "out of control" or "irresponsible". The first half of the film doesn't do nearly as good a job identifying the main characters as disrespected nerds as Weird Science does and the consequences/stakes are not nearly as high as they are in Risky Business but this film has the kind of party that house party movies have wanted to have sense the genre was invented. That was the whole driving point of this film. And the fact that for their actual plot line they borrow heavily from both Risky Business and Weird Science and probably many other house party movies can be easily overlooked. In fact the film basically removes any chance of redemption for any of the characters once party goes get into the house. It should ruin the tension of the narrative structure but considering the events of the party and the infectious unbelievable feel of the film it's easy to forget that this is not a cause and effect story, this is a "How much legendary shit can we fit into a ninety minute excuse to destroy the Warner Brothers Ranch street lot." So the whole point of the film isn't wondering how the hell the characters are going to avoid the consequences of this completely awesome disaster of a night but to count young boobs, remember your youth and thank God (if you're like me) that you never did anything remotely this stupid (no matter how hard you actually tried to).
The film does ultimately fail to cash in on its found footage structure. It's third act is pure Hollywood magic as the kids parents casually accept the fact that their home/entire neighborhood has burned to the ground, the best friends meet with minor (considering the events that take place) consequences and the fact that they will all be in debt/civil court for the rest of their lives as minor trivialities compared to the legendary fame they have gained at their high school and with the media. Their efforts were a complete success, not a single serious downside to the entire night is shown accept for the person who filmed the whole mess who is under suspicion of killing his parents (don't make your own movies kids only freaks and psycho's take Hollywood's job away from them).
For me as a viewer considering the epic level of chaos that is presented to the audience the lack of consequences and the reaction of the parents/neighborhood/school weakened the entire film. There was a point when Thomas and friends are on the roof of the garage looking over what they have brought upon their neighborhood and a media helicopter shines a light down on Thomas and he double deuces the news chopper and the message is clear "we understand the generation before us sold our private lives to the highest bidder and we have no secrets from the world, you wanted to see everything all the time? this is the consequences, the yin to the yang of no more privacy is never being able to shut out the constant stream of data. No privacy doesn't just mean you get to spy on your neighbors it means you can't NOT spy on your neighbors, a luxury we are just now starting to understand.
Project X could have been an extremely well done cautionary tale about how social media saturation and technology are causing our lives overlap in ways we still do not understand fully. What it ends up being is a possibly the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to showing what kids dream of doing every Saturday night. This is not the first film that has failed to capitalize on its first two acts with a strong third act, Daybreakers tacked on a weak sequilzed ending to an otherwise solid film and it weakened the entire film. Project X needed to have a third act that was just as crazy over the top as its first two. The parents needed to be world destoryingly pissed off, we needed to see the neighborhood in the light of day with the family looking over the distruction and the kid looking at his dad and saying "hey once the fire department lets us get back to the house, you will see there is not 1 single towel by the hot tub!" Yes he and his friends reached infamy but the third act shows that mainstream Hollywood is no longer capable of anything other than a "happy" ending or the "twist" ending. and Project X some how fulfills both. Everything magically turns out relatively okay and considering the rest of the film a "happy" ending is a "twist" ending. If they had followed through then Thomas and his friends would have accepted the bad with the "good" like Cameron does when he kicks his dads convertible out the window.
Actions have consequences and this movie has no real consequences for the characters. They get everything they wanted and plan to do it again. Ultimately the message of Project X is disturbingly clear, if you are famous or get famous doing it, Nothing is unforgivable.
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