Simon plays ‘Nick’ who is really just Simon but with a different haircut. Instead of playing a schoolboy whilst in his early 30’s, the now 35 year old Simon plays a young man just graduating from university. He has range, you have to give him that! The film opens with him having sex with his dull girlfriend, Caitlin. She’s played by Simon’s real life partner so that’s a bit creepy especially as they have no chemistry whatsoever. To be fair, they may be great actors, because the plot is that she’s about to dump him.
Before we get to the plot the film nails it’s colours firmly to the mast when Simon’s ejaculate goes over his graduation gown, meaning we get a lovely scene of his mother scratching it off and licking her fingers. Caitlin tells Simon they are finished, and after embarrassing himself at the graduation, when he begs for her to come back, he goes into a downward spiral.
Things soon look up however when his chunky friend Shane reminds them that they have tickets for a music festival. Simon doesn’t want to go as Caitlin will be there. ‘Don’t worry we won’t see her’ says his friend ‘There are 100,000 people there’. Of course they meet up before 30 minutes have passed. Before that great moment we get some treats as our heroes try to get on the train using children’s tickets - it’s not like Simon has made a career out of pretending to be young is it?! On the way they meet Amy, an annoying yet lonely Australian festival regular. Hope she gets a nice character arc as she seems a bit sad.
At the festival our heroes immediately meet up with Caitlin as well as her friends - the rich one, the ditzy one who doesn’t remember names and the stoner. They also meet ‘The Pirate’ who is so called as he has one leg. The Pirate has designs on Caitlin so is immediately the boo hiss bad guy despite being far more likeable than Simon.
Various festival adventures follow such as those old standards of a bestiality druid ceremony and a drug bender with a Smurf. The climax promises to be great - what celebrity will be revealed to be the mask wearing DJ Hammerhead? Will our friends find love and will drug use, goat sex, disabled abuse and vandalism ever be acceptable in a mainstream film? You big square!
It would be churlish to be too harsh on this film. It doesn’t set out to be great art and is instead a celebration of freedom and having a good time. As a 49 year old misery it was hard to get invested! I didn’t like any of the characters and Simon’s journey from being a dick to being a slightly lesser dick gave me no warm feelings whatsoever. Annoying Amy was just that, and her fledgling romance with black man mountain Shane didn’t ring true at all.
There were a couple of minor cameos with Nick Frost showing up as a tattooist in one scene. The reveal of the famous DJ’s secret identity was seriously underwhelming and the whole subplot with the druids was just weird.
Simon’s night of love was OK but as a car owner who had someone once sleep in his Fiesta I have to call foul on that behaviour. I did quite like the scene of him imagining a life with the Smurf girl through marriage, kids and divorce but I think I liked it better when I first saw Harold & Kumar do it with a big bag of weed.
The film could easily have been retooled as an ‘Inbetweeners’ episode and it really only served to confirm that the parts of that group are less than the sum of the whole. Hee-hee I said ‘parts’ and ‘whole’ - they should have had me scripting this film!
Not many laughs are to be had at ‘The Festival’ but it was easy going, offensive fun.
Pass marks but only just.
THE Tag Line - Life With A Smurf Can Be Fun. 53%
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