First Hit: There wasn’t any acting because none was required.
This film is quite simply about a party that got away from itself.
The likelihood that high school kid could have a party like this in the neighborhood and house he was living in without the cops stopping it before it got the size it did is highly unlikely. The point, or so it seems in this film, is that a nerdy kid can make a lasting name for himself if he has a party of epic proportions.
Besides all this, the film was shot so that the audience was viewing it from an attendees camera point of view. This is the most interesting thing about this film.
The three main subjects Thomas (played by Thomas Mann), Costa (Oliver Cooper) and JB (played by Jonathan Daniel Brown) hired Dax (played by Dax Flame) to film the entire event. This was the inventive part of the film because it was as if none of the actors were acting, they just had a party and filmed it.
The love interest in the film was between Thomas and Kirby (played by Kirby Bliss Blanton) which, of course had its ups, downs and up.
Mann was good as the kid who wanted to be more “in” but had some, but not acted upon, consciousness about how to go about it. Cooper was the real driver of the party to fulfill his own whims and wishes. As this character he did a very good job. Was he likable? Not really. Brown was fine as the overweight kid who was always the third wheel and who comes out of his shell a bit during the party. Flame was on camera, I think, three times and was perfect as the cameraman. He had the right look and answers to questions. Blanton was beautifully engaging and good as the girl who was willing to take a friendship with Thomas a little farther. Matt Drake and Michael Bacall wrote the script and I’m not sure of the inspiration except maybe through other films like Animal House and The Hangover movies. Nima Nourizadeh directed this and I’m sure in some ways it must have been both easy and difficult.
Overall: Not an inspiring or interesting film and outside of high school boys, I’m hard pressed to know who the audience is.