arrive in France "Eurotrip."
Colin Covert, Star Tribune
Published February 20, 2004
From here on out, I will stop complaining about movies made by people who derive all their ideas from other movies, because
now I have seen a movie made by people who draw all their inspiration from "Girls Gone Wild" videos. "Eurotrip" gives smut a
bad name. It would gag a sewer worker.
This just in: Teenagers want to have sex! To most of us, this is not a news flash, but apparently DreamWorks Pictures thinks the
point has not been made clearly enough. The writers of the reviled "Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat" restate the obvious in this tale
of hormonally obsessed Yanks on a gropefest in the European Union. The result is likely to lose us what few allies we still have
there.
This is the sort of film in which the characters don't have last names or personal histories, and spend every moment thinking
about booty and booze. Scott (Scott Mechlowitz) angrily breaks off his e-mail relationship with German pen pal Mieke after
receiving a sexy invitation to get together.
When he discovers that Mieke is a girl, and a beauty at that, Scott tries to reconnect but finds that she has blocked his messages.
Rather than send her an apology from a friend's computer, Scott does the stupid movie thing and catches the first transatlantic
plane. From there on out, it's a cavalcade of Amsterdam brothels, French nude beaches and Slovenian street-urinating as he and
three interchangeable friends wend their way toward Berlin.
Alec Berg, David Mandel and writer/director Jeff Schaffer toss sex-farce antics and cross-cultural misfires in a drum, tumble
them around and pull them out at random like lottery numbers.
The film scrapes bottom on the trench of tastelessness with a Vatican City sequence involving dead-pontiff jokes, setting fire to
the pope's vestments and a leering sex scene in a confessional. I can't imagine any other faith being subjected to this kind of
abuse, and it's doubly worrisome in a movie aimed at kids.
"Eurotrip" earns a footnote in film history for the sheer number of (mostly unattractive) naked bodies on full frontal display. How
the MPAA could slap Bernardo Bertolucci's artful "The Dreamers" with a punishing NC-17 rating while giving this a mere R is
beyond understanding.
Amazingly, Matt Damon and Lucy Lawless appear in smallish, vulgar roles they will want to erase from their résumés pronto.
When a quality actor appears in a trashy project, it's usually called slumming. In this case, it's more like dumpster diving.
Having gone on the record as an admirer of "Jackass: The Movie," the "American Pie" trilogy and "Bad Santa," I'm no prude.
(Ever notice how when someone announces they're not a prude, it usually means they are?) But for vulgarity to work, it must be
based on a foundation of wit, creativity, substantial character, heart or iconoclastic nerve. "Eurotrip," a tower of bad decisions
built on drivel, quickly collapses under its insubstantial weight.
Zdenek Vavra
Associated Press
Published February 19, 2004
