Project X - Extended Cut - Blu-Ray

Movie: Thomas (Thomas Mann) is a loser, as he is in the book. To most of his classmates, he is simply invisible. And so it seemed certain that he would spend his birthday again this year only with his buddies Costa (Oliver Cooper) and J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown). But then Costa has the idea that would finally allow the trio to step out of the humiliating shadow of anonymity: Have Thomas throw a party that everyone at school would be talking about for years to come. To record it for posterity, the loner Dex (Dex Flame) from the film club is unceremoniously hired to film the party with his camera. What the boys don't suspect: their party actually turns out to be a blast - but in a completely different way than planned....

If anyone in Hollywood knows about parties, it's undoubtedly Todd Philipps. After all, the director has shown in Road Trip, Old School and, of course, in the two Hangover movies in more than amusing ways what consequences debauched parties can have. For the ultimate party film, Phillips was therefore virtually predestined as a producer. He left the directing to Nima Nourizadeh, who made his feature film debut with Project X. The result is a fun representative of the party. The result is a fun representative of the found footage genre, which until now has primarily produced horror (Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity) or fantasy films (Chronicle). Staging a crude, irreverent and completely politically incorrect comedy in this way could easily have led to an exhausting, rather annoying result. But it's not just thanks to pleasantly less arguably shaky scenes that Project X's home video look works surprisingly well.

The film is clearly aimed at a slightly younger audience, for whom it is everyday life to record everything with the help of mobile phones and video cameras and make it available to the general public on portals like YouTube and Facebook. The language used by the protagonists alone is likely to arouse astonishment and blushes of shame in some older viewers. Young people, on the other hand, will be amused by the sometimes very coarse language.

The humor is overall very raunchy, revolves mainly around sex and drug use. Conversations about what you'd like to stick in whom, when and where, lots of naked flesh (or as US late night host Jimmy Kimmel so nicely puts it in the credits, the last time there were this many teenage boobs was at an R. Kelly birthday party) and an orgy of destruction par excellence dominate the proceedings. As an adult viewer, you get the feeling that your own moral sensibilities should actually forbid you from laughing at it. After all, the message of the movie, if you really want to look for it, isn't really a commendable one. The sometimes not exactly exemplary behaviour of the protagonists is hardly condemned. On the contrary. But even when you should be annoyed by it, you catch yourself (if you also like a bit of cruder US comedy) repeatedly breaking out into slightly bashful, but still hearty laughter.

Project X is vulgar, completely over the top and more than a little politically incorrect. These ingredients, mixed with a delightfully absurd party ideas and Fremdschäm-momenten, make this comedy despite some weaknesses to a quite large pleasure, with which one can still have unrestrained fun beyond the 20. If you like the films of Todd Phillips, you should simply put aside all moral reservations and just indulge in this party comedy. Worth seeing!

The Extended Cut: Just under six minutes more party scenes, more bare breasts and more mayhem. Those who liked the theatrical version will be pleased with the additional or alternate footage. However, it doesn't really enrich the film.

Picture + Sound: Since the film has been staged in the found footage style and should have been shot by standard digital and mobile phone cameras, small weaknesses such as slight dragging effects or blurring are rather intentional stylistic device and should therefore not really be evaluated negatively. Overall, the picture is clean and in the quieter moments also very sharp. The sound is primarily determined by the rich bass of the party soundtrack and the dialogues. In the final third, a few decent surround effects are added. All in all, a more than satisfactory technical realization. Good!

Extras: Besides the extended film version, the Blu-ray has only a meager 14 minutes of additional extras to offer. A brief behind-the-scenes look (approx. 5:30 min.), a short documentary on the casting of the lead actors (approx. 5 min.) and an amusing listing of the costs of the orgy of destruction (approx. 3 min.) are all that the inclined viewer gets to see in the bonus section. A bit lean.

Conclusion: Project X is adolescent, politically incorrect, vulgar, completely pointless - and damn amusing. A humorous to the pain barrier going party film, in which indeed rather a younger audience from 16 will have his fun. But even older viewers who want to feast on frivolities and excessive tastelessness will get their money's worth. The Blu-ray offers the chaotic party optionally in a nearly 6 minutes longer version, the other extras are very meager, but just worth seeing! And so the bottom line is: for joy of the crude comedy quite recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp