21 & OVER

Come Christmas, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore must be a goddamn pain in the ass. Obviously the writers of The Hangover believe that once they give you a present, it’s perfectly acceptable to just change the wrapping paper and hand it over again and again... and again.

Repetitive and tone-deaf, their directorial debut 21 & Over is an exercise in flogging a dead Hangover horse and gay-bashing various stereotypes.
It’s a pity, as the young cast are a talented and charming lot, with Pitch Perfect’s Skylar Astin bringing a nice maturity to his Wall Street hopeful who may have outgrown his school friends. Meanwhile John Cusack doppelgänger Miles Teller also impresses, eschewing the vulnerability he showed in Rabbit Hole in favour of a Vince Vaughn-lite rapid-fire delivery.  
But the cast’s warmth and chemistry is buried under the screenplay’s unfocused mayhem and a barrage of racism and sexism. As women are urinated on and sexually assaulted and Asian adults are portrayed as sociopathic dragon parents, 21 & Over feels tired, formulaic and oddly tame. In fact, it’s a film solely for lovers of movies about drunken college kids – provided they’ve never before seen a film about drunken college kids.