Movie Review: House Party

 

Michael's Movie Grade: C+

An enjoyable comedy.

This film's humor may be a bit uneven, but when it works it can be quite funny. The best moments are when it is at its most over the top and silly. Though the early scenes in this movie are far-fetched they have a certain grounding in reality, as the film goes on though it lets completely go of this grounding in reality and this is when it truly gets funny. The early scenes (with a few exceptions like the hologram) have a few lights laughs in them, but one gets the feeling that it should be funnier than it is. Even when our main characters decide to throw a party in Lebron James' house, there is still this grounding in some sort of reality keeping the laughs not as loud as they should be. However towards the last act of the film, this movie gets some really good laugh out loud moments as it leaves reality at the doorstep. The scenes with the koala at the party and the scene where our main characters go to retrieve something that was taken (I am giving no more away about this scene because it will be much funnier that way), are laugh out loud funny and make up for the scenes that were lacking in laughs. Truly silly over the top comedies have been becoming rarer lately. There are romantic comedies and superhero films with a lot of humor, but there are surprisingly few all out comedies lately and these moments reminded me just how much I have missed these types of movies. This made me grateful I saw this movie, because even if it is not a consistently funny film, the funny moments are delightful. This especially appealed to me as someone who become a movie buff through Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges, I have long had a silly over the top comedy. There are some jokes that fall flat, such as the ones having to do with the DJ and with the promoters who are angry at our main characters, but as Groucho Marx said " Well, all the jokes can't be good. You've got to expect that once in awhile." 

Like in many of these types of comedies, the storyline is simple and nothing groundbreaking, but it does its job. The characters while not having much depth are likable and even if what they are doing is wrong it is easy to care about them and want to see them succeed. There is also a nice believable friendship between the two and a bit of an arc that these characters go through. The storyline is predictable but it moves at a nice pace and is just good enough to keep us interested even during the jokes that fell flat. 

This may not be a new comedy classic but it provided this comedy lover with a fun trip to the movies.