Film Review: Miss March

In the end, “Miss March” probably will do more good for Playboy than Fox Atomic. The teen comedy, which most teens can’t see anyway unless accompanied by an immature adult, is built around the opposite reactions of two pubescent boys to a Playboy centerfold. That the film holds up the magazine as a touchstone of American culture is undoubtedly accurate. But here’s the deal: The worst sex cartoon in Playboy’s long history can’t compete with the sheer vacuousness of this inane comedy.

The film’s stars, directors, writers and even songwriters are Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, members of the cable TV comedy troupe the Whitest Kids U’ Know. Their humor takes awhile to get used to — certainly more than the 90 minutes they have here — so don’t look for “Miss March” to be around well into April.

Related Stories

TV

'Ted Lasso' Finale: This Might Be All That We Get

Movies

Former China Film Group Boss to Serve as Jury Head of Asian World Film Festival

Cregger and Moore are a throwback to those old comedy teams where an idiot and a straight man encounter the perplexing world of adults. Moore plays the zany one, channeling Jim Carrey to the point of copyright infringement. Cregger plays straight man to the point of blandness.

The plot says Cregger’s character Eugene has been in a coma for four years. When he awakens, no one including his father could care less. Now that’s a straight man. No, that’s wrong: His buddy Tucker (Moore) not only cares, he lovingly woke him up by bashing his skull with a baseball bat.

You see, Eugene knocked himself out at the moment he was supposed to have sex for the first time with his alluring high school sweetheart, Cindi (Raquel Alessi), on prom night. He was understandably nervous since seeing Playboy as a kid turned him into a sexual abstainer. Tucker, on the other hand, became a sex addict.

Well, it is four years later and not only has his dad moved to Florida, Cindi has moved to the Playboy centerfold. Guess time really does change things.

Tucker has this idea to spirit Eugene from his hospital bed on a swift trip to Hollywood and the Playboy Mansion to check on Cindi and see whether she still cares. Tucker has an extra motive in the fact that his sometime girlfriend, Candace (Molly Stanton, in what actually is a longer and better part than the title role), wants to kill him — if her fireman brother doesn’t take his ax to Tucker first.

The road trip navigates through a series of witless excrement and piss jokes, dick humor, black stereotypes, Playmate stereotypes and bad rap music that are old enough to cause the most forgiving teenager to yawn. Cregger and Moore make certain they are front and center every moment, but that is not necessarily to their advantage. You might want to hide out when gags fall as flat as these.

The Playboy Mansion is the film’s libertine Valhalla where anyone can gate-crash in a fireman’s uniform and Hugh Hefner is on hand to dispense Bunny philosophy. You might want to see the outtakes from that scene: Hef must have winced more than twice as he mouthed such B.S. about his old cross-eyed girlfriend.

There are so many bits that go nowhere here it’s no wonder the movie ends up in the same place. Tech credits are ordinary at best, and the whole thing reeks of something that can’t wait to get to DVD for background noise at frat parties.