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Barely Legal
Sue, Cheryl and Lexi are three college freshmen who have been best friends since they were born on the same day. They do something special every year for their birthday, but on their eighteenth, they set out to lose their virginity.
Release : | 2011 |
Rating : | 3.2 |
Studio : | The Asylum, |
Crew : | Production Design, Additional Photography, |
Cast : | Jeneta St. Clair Lisa Younger Melissa Johnston Morgan Benoit Myko Olivier |
Genre : | Comedy |
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Simply A Masterpiece
A story that's too fascinating to pass by...
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
"Barely Legal" is an Asylum "comedy" which recycles the plot of the studio's "18 Year old Virgin" with three virgins instead of one. It's also not as good as that movie; for one, there's no Olivia Alaina May. This one has more actresses getting naked, but none are as attractive as her.The plot is something to do with three girls who were born on the same day deciding to lose their virginity on their 18th birthday. They are apparently not related, and yet all live under the same roof, in a house which is not unlike a mansion. They seem to have no parents. Anyway, one is a Christian, the other is a slut (except she's supposed to be a virgin...) and the other is... blonde. There's not much to say about her, or any of the three leads, aside from that.This movie is also set at a party which seems to provide endless opportunity for the three leads to have bizarre, and even traumatic, sexual experiences. There's a video game control pad used as a sex toy and a scene in which a blind man (with guide dog) apparently tries to apply peanut butter to the vagina of one of our heroines before being called away... you can guess what happens next.Speaking of vaginas, funnily enough, the only one of the three leads who shows hers is the buttoned down, Christian type. She's also the least attractive of all of them.Much of what happens in this movie could actually make some kind of an impression if it were in a better movie. The handling is just so weirdly distancing it's like the movie is a prolonged dream sequence. Or is it a nightmare? You be the judge.It is, however, better than some of the later Asylum "comedies". At least you won't need therapy to get over its 'gross-out' moments.
OK, let's be real here. It's a teenage sex comedy. We all know what to expect. So the criteria are not how it provides insight into the human condition, they are whether it is funny. The sad truth is that most teenage sex comedies suck as far as laughs go. The exceptional ones --- your American Pie or Superbad --- keep you laughing pretty much nonstop, but 90% of the movies in this category consist of not just a formulaic plot but also not a single laugh.So how does this compare? Well in the hope that the screenwriter one day reads these reviews, let me give my analysis. Naomi Selfman has written a few movies in this vein, but the two best (IMHO) are this and the 18 Year Old Virgin. The good thing about both of these movies is that they are strongly written from the female point of view, which is not just empowering, blah blah, it also provides for a whole new line of jokes. ON THE OTHER HAND both these movies suffer in the script, primarily I suspect from lack of time. Once the script seemed finished, it should have been put aside for three months or so, then revised. And perhaps had a collaborator brought on board. In both cases the overall premise for the movie is good. It is presented, and grabs our attention right away, the pacing throughout the movie is good, and little time is wasted on nonsense. The problem is with the jokes themselves. These come in a few different formssometimes a good joke lives off tension. The audience can see what is going to happen, but it doesn't quite happen, then it doesn't quite happen, then it almost but doesn't quite happen, and then, just when you've given up, it happens. - other times a good joke happens out of left field, totally not what and when you expectedBoth of these are missing in the scripts. The jokes, while funny, are formulaic --- we see the setup, and there's no variation or surprise in the pacing. a third problem (and this really seems a problem with rushed scripts) is the setup that goes nowhere. For example the on-going water balloons in this movie. They seemed like there was supposed to be a setup there --- but there was never a payoff. If a payoff couldn't be figured out, the setup should have been stripped out the movie.the final problem is that the absolute best moments in comedy come from the serial gag that builds up in ever more ludicrous ways. We see the first joke and laugh, then somewhat later we see an extension to it and laugh, then even later we see a truly over the top version of it and laugh till our guts ache. There was none of that sort of ongoing serial gag in this. For example the setup of Sue with the washing machine was a good start. But that should have continued to the vacuum cleaner not being the mild gag that it was but more something like she starts to clean (in front of everyone else) realizes what's happening, and even so loses control in front of them while they all stare. Then even later we see something unexpected like she's walking along the street with her grandmother, a pneumatic drill starts pounding up the street, and they both go flush and start twitching and trying to control themselves, while the grandmother says "I guess you really are one of us" or something. I do hope Naomi Selfman gets a chance to write more of these comedies from the female point of view, but I ALSO hope that she has a chance to spend more time on the future scripts so that they move from around "better than average" to "OMG I could not stop laughing". We'll see.
None of the Asylum teen sex comedies are particularly good, so saying that Barely Legal is the best of them is probably not saying very much. It never does reach the atrociousness of Sex Pot and Celebrity Sex Tape and Milf and 18 Year Old Virgin weren't much better either. Barely Legal does at least have Myko Olivier, who does bring likability to the only really relateable character in the movie. It does have a decent soundtrack and is thankfully not as vulgar or intelligence-insulting as the other Asylum teen sex comedies. Nothing stands out visually though, the movie can have an over-saturated look to it and the camera work was flat-looking. I was not expecting the dialogue to be any good, it was one of the worst things about all of Asylum's teen sex comedies and has never been a strong point with The Asylum either. That doesn't excuse it being so banal, unpleasantly smutty and embarrassingly cheesy all the time, the way it's delivered too it sounds improvised and any lines so any lines meant to be funny or memorable just didn't have the impact. The comedy literally doesn't exist, and some of the attempted sexiness is enough to make anybody cringe. The story was a disaster to the extent that there was hardly any at all. What there is of it is incredibly predictable, but even worse is it feels too much of an excuse to string along lots of sights of tits, nudity and such. Everything just felt shallow and half-hearted. The characters are also swamped, with the sole exception of Eric Barely Legal is the kind of movie that doesn't let you root for them, and nothing whatsoever is done to develop it. They're just there as stereotypical ciphers. And the acting is atrocious really, the girls are hot but their acting talents certainly are not and there didn't seem to be a lot of real chemistry between them. In conclusion, not a good movie at all but compared to all the other Asylum teen sex comedies seen it definitely could have been worse. 3/10 Bethany Cox
This is the first film I have knowingly ever seen from everybody's favourite exploitation/mockbuster studio out of Los Angeles, The Asylum. These people can do more with $200,000 than others who get $50,000,000 can do.This is another homage to the 1980's teen sex comedy craze that was ushered in by Bob Clark's Porky's back in 1981. Three teenage girls who just happened to be born on the same day and seemingly were all from families of privilege since they live in a huge mansion with no other people like a butler or maid, decide that they will all lose their virginity on their 18th birthday.Lexi (Lisa Younger) is a slutty girl who certainly doesn't act chaste for a virgin. She is looking for somebody named J.J. who "felt her up" several days earlier. Cheryl (Jeneta St. Clair), the most level-headed of the three, already plans to "do it" with her greasy boyfriend Jake (Morgan Benoit). Sue (Melissa Johnston), a very devout Roman Catholic, doesn't want to go through with this and has apparently never "pleasured herself".So while these three attempt to follow through, the people they invited to their party are certainly not shy when it comes to underage drinking, public sex, pot smoking and rabble rousing. It's droll to see Lexi, Sue and Cheryl oblivious to the 100 other people they invited having a good time.As expected, the acting is atrociously bad, save for Myko Olivier's Eric, who plays the reserved, shy and uncomfortable Eric that is a major part of Cheryl's story arc. However, there's something to be said about seeing a movie in 2011 filled with college kids who aren't worrying about a bad economy making it tough to find work after graduation. You're just seeing a good representation of what goes on at a college keg party.If there'e ever a snowstorm or a slow night ahead, this actually wouldn't be too bad to screen. It's just as good as any overblown Hollywood production.