Eurotrip

Review by Jason Donner

Let's just put it right out on the table, folks. I haven't laughed this hard in a movie since probably South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. This new movie, Eurotrip, is raunchy, ballsy, and funny as all get out. I laughed so hard at this movie that it hurt. Literally hurt. This is the funniest movie in a long, long time.

Eurotrip is the story of Scott Thomas, a brand new high school graduate who gets dumped embarrassingly by his long-time girlfriend so harshly that it's made into a rock song (which is a really inspired running gag). After the humiliation of such a public drop, he is further aggravated by the fact that his good German pen pal, Mike, wants to "rendezvous" with him. Unwilling to switch sides, Scott writes Mike a profanity-filled letter telling him to never write him again.

However, the bump in that particular road is that Mike turns out not to be a guy, but a hot German chick and could be Scott's one and only true love. The problem is, how to win her heart after she's blocked your e-mail address?

Go to Europe with some friends, of course! That's the set-up for Eurotrip... a sort of but not quite sequel to Road Trip where four friends cross Europe and have strange, sick, and demented adventures on the way.

So, it's exactly like Road Trip... only different.

This movie is not for the overly moral or the weak of heart. To put it simply, there is a lot in this movie that is just plain wrong... Wrong in a good way, mind you... but still very very wrong.

The script is nothing more than a clothesline to hang situation after situation on, but for this movie it works and works well. In fact, the places where Eurotrip actually started falling apart was when it tried to have a real story. The last ten of fifteen minutes of this movie are a mess, but by then you've laughed so hard than it's perfectly excusable.

This is a great cast of people. I haven't heard of any of the guys before, but I have seen Michelle Trachtenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harriet the Spy which begs the question... is it wrong to ogle and lust after Harriet the Spy now? Nevertheless - whether it is wrong or not - this cast works together. They're funny, they're energetic, and they are fun to watch. Even the incidental characters from the creepy Italian guy to the soccer hooligans are great.

Eurotrip is side-splittingly funny, jaw-droppingly shocking, and gloriously dirty, but it manages to do all this without being mean-spirited even though it makes a lot of fun of various European stereotypes. The heart of the film is in the laughter and the laughter here comes hard and comes often.

Still, I have to say again... this movie isn't for the faint of heart as it doesn't seem interested in exercising any restraint at all. Yeah, it's full of nudity... but what they don't tell you is that 75 percent of that nudity is male... and I'm talking full frontal. Still, the scene in question is a funny scene. One of many. I just haven't seen that many penises at once. Ever.

Unless you're a puritanical prude you'll enjoy this one. I'm shocked at how funny it was. Most of the time these movies are just the average tame sex comedies... it's rather refreshing to see one go balls to the wall and just be offensive, crass, and funny.