THE VIRGINITY HIT (Sony, 2010) D: Huck Botko, Andrew Gurland, w/ Matt Bennett, Zack Pearlman. Rating: NNN DVD package: NN Rating: NNN
The Virginity Hit offers a slightly darker twist on the classic American Pie theme: teenage boys losing their virginity.
After two years together, Matt and Nicole (Matt Bennett and Nicole Weaver) are ready to go all the way. When that goes wrong, Matt’s best friend, Zack (Zack Pearlman), pushes him into a strange and humiliating odyssey involving his adopted sister, a woman on the internet and, finally, a porn star.
Some of Matt’s misadventures are surprising and funny, and the young cast delivers them with flawless naturalism enhanced by the now-familiar device of shooting everything through the characters’ minicams and cellphones.
Zack does most of the shooting. On the surface, he’s the standard good-hearted goof. Underneath, he’s a passive-aggressive creep using his camera as a weapon. Add that to the way everyone, Matt included, is prepared beforehand to put his most intimate and worst moments on YouTube and you have a portrait of people badly divorced from their own lives. That a porn star (Sunny Leone) is the movie’s moral centre only drives the point home.
If this seems like too much thematic weight for an absurd comedy, consider that writer-directors Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland wrote The Last Exorcism, the smartest horror movie to come along in years.
The commentary offers non-stop jokiness. Some of it is funny.
EXTRAS Director and cast commentary, audition footage, Weaver doc. Widescreen. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai audio. English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai subtitles.
