Eurotrip (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Crazy hot European sexcapade
Review: I'll be the first to admit I was very skeptical about this film. The trailer doesn't do much for the film unless you've fantasized about the female lead (Michelle Trachtenberg), which is disturbing at least for me since I remember her as sweet little Harriet The Spy but perhaps I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. The film begins sometime during the high school graduation of Scott Thomas and his pals. During a family photo-opt Scotty gets dumped by his girlfriend all the while the family continues snapping pictures of their son's big day. Flash -forward to the senior party where Matt Damon struts his stuff as a punk rocker in the funniest cameo I've seen in years. The catchy "Scotty Doesn't Know" says it all. Like many teen movies there's the gratuitous nudity surprisingly and disturbingly there's a nudist beach scene featuring full frontals of middle-aged men. It's nice to see women aren't the only ones objectified in this flick but then again....gross. There are the nonsensical plot twists and the movie seems to fly by rather quickly. This film is no Road Trip (necessarily not a bad thing anything without Tom Green sucking face with a mouse deserves three stars) and remains light, funny and just downright fun. And kudos to Michelle for not displaying her cans on screen.

Rating:
Summary: Touring the old world with a smile
Review: In the tradition of "National Lampoons Animal House" and "American Pie" comes "Eurotrip", a trashy gross-out sex comedy. It is low brow and crass, but if you like that kind of thing (I know I do), then you will like this. Scotty (Scott Mechlowicz) is a recent high school graduate cruelly tells off his e-mail pen-pal, only to find out that the pen-pal is actually a sexy girl. So Scotty and his lazy buddy Cooper (Jacob Pitts) go to Europe and hook up with some friends that are already there; non-identical twin siblings Jamie (Travis Wester as the walking travelig guide) and Jenny (Michelle Tranchtenberg, in a sexy role proveing she's all grown up now), and get involved in one misadventure after another. As I said this movie is pretty trashy, but it's all in good fun, and it's the best comedy I have seen in a long, long time. Director and co-writer Jeff Schaffer deserves a nod; it isn't often that I like a comedy (that dosn't mean I don't like comedies, it's just I don't like a lot of what I see). The actor all do a good job with what they are given. By the way, my favorite scenes are the nude beach and the scene in Vatican City. It isn't deep, but it is funny, and that is what counts.

Rating:
Summary: Not great art but great fun.
Review: Not every movie is made to be great art. Some films are made to be escapes from the world for a little while. This is one of those pictures.
I watched this movie (unrated DVD edition) with moderate expectations and was blown away by the charcaters and the story flow. I really enjoyed it (though I have only watched it once so far) and plan to enjoy it again.

Note that there is a lot of nudity in this picture so it is not family friendly but if you can see it and enjoy silly movies then this one is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious but freakily weird
Review: Pretty hilarious piece of teen comedic trash. The excess of nudity in the nude beach scene is a bit eccentric being a heterosexual male, but otherwise it's so fricken funny your stomach hurts. Hilarious, but weird!

Rating:
Summary: Pubescent trash for the masses
Review: Tasteless trash trying to titillate teens!NOT recommended for anyone with real family values or hopes of avoiding the pitfalls of the path of satan.This movie says alot about the morals of young people all around the world.Teens who would make fun of a curious and intelligent young man who wants to see churches in europe.Teens who would drink alcoholic beverages illegally at unsupervised parties.Teens who would engage in incest while under the influence of an illegal substance.Teens who would use violence against a street performer to earn money.The list goes on and on until this perversion is completed when you need to scrub your skin with hot water to cleanse yourself of the layer of filth it leaves upon the mind body and soul.The sole star is for the brief but welcomed geography lessons.

Rating:
Summary: crazy hot european fun
Review: That was the tightest movie ever. crazy hilarious

Rating:
Summary: Young Ugly Americans in Europe is still not really funny
Review: The "Eurotrip" DVD has a Nude Scene Index as a special feature, which tells you what the makers of the film think is the strength of this 2004 comedy, to wit, the jokes might not work and the characters might not be interesting, but we have naked people. More importantly, them have made them easily accessible for your viewing pleasure, so what more could you really ask for in a movie? Oh, do not get me started on that score.

The movie starts off as Scott Thomas (Scott Mechlowicz) has a really bad graduation day. His girl friend, Fiona (Kristin Kreuk) dumps him and shows up at a party with her boyfriend, Donny (Matt Damon), whose not only in the band but has written a infectious new song called "Scotty Doesn't Know" that explains how in the dark our hero has been (there is both a sing along and a music video for this song by Lustra in the special features). Then, to add insult to injury, he breaks off his e-mail relationship with Mieke, because he is convinced by his friend Cooper Harris (Jacob Pitts) that Mieke is a gay German guy who is just trying to hit on him. Then his little brother Bert (Nial Iskhakov) explains that "Mieke" is not the German short version of Michael but rather of Michelle. So Mieke is a hot young German blond woman who thinks that Scotty could be "the one," and Scotty has just blown her off. Apparently there is a lot that Scott doesn't know, including basic German.

This turn of events explains why Mieke has blocked Scotty's e-mail and why he decides that the most important thing in the world is getting to Berlin to meet Mieke in the flesh, so to speak. Cooper finds a way to get Scotty to England and comes along for the trip. Since Europe is a fairly small "country," they manage to hook up with their friends, the twins, brother Jamie (Travis Wester), who carries around the Frommer travel guide even though he has committed it to memory, and sister Jenny (Michelle Trachtenberg), who is considered one of the guys for some long that we are supposed to believe nobody (i.e., Cooper) has noticed she is a girl.

At this point it becomes clear that the idea of this movie is to send the quartet to a recognizable European city and have them get a taste of the local culture and still get out of town alive. But the big problem with this movie is that most of their problems have to do with sexual deviance. That means the creepy Italian guy (Fred Armisen) who likes to wait for the train to go through a tunnel so he can sexually assault strangers and Madame Vandersexx (Lucy Lawless) at a S&M club (bring a flyer, get a free t-shirt). Apparently the idea is that if people go to Europe to have sex rather than see museums, then they deserve to be punished by having horrible things happen to them, and while that sounds like a worthwhile position to take in these troubled times, it is not really that funny. Neither is the idea that being homophobic is a necessary survival skill for daily living.

Unfortunately "Eurotrip" saves the draw-droppingly bad part of the film for the climax, which I am sure seemed like a good idea at the time. It takes place at the Vatican, which is a strange enough location to pick for our hero to finally catch up with the woman he loves, but as soon as a tour guide points out that the fancy rope behind the glass door is attached to bell that is only rung to announce the death of the Pope, you know things are not going to go well. The fact that the chimney in the Sistine Chapel is not connected to a fireplace in St. Peter's Basilica certainly bothered me and while there may well be confessionals in the Vatican I have a hard time believing they would be used for such secular purposes.

Another problem is that teenage girls have been played by young women in their 20s for so long that when you have an actual 18-year-old actress playing an 18-year-old character like Michelle Trachtenberg does in this movie, she still seems like a kid sister. Besides, she also seems too smart to end up making the choice she ends up making just to have a European sexual experience (By the end of the film the lesson seems to be that those who cannot have sex in Europe only deserve to have sex with others who could not have sex in Europe, like it was an attempt to weed out a regressive gene or something). After "Just Married" it was obvious that the only way for comedies about Americans traveling through Europe to go would have to be up, but who expected such a small incremental step like this movie? But then 2004 was a really wretched year for comedies, especially at those aimed at the pocketbooks of the youth of America.

There are some decent extras on this one, and not just because it takes a while to get to the point where you have heard "Scotty Doesn't Know" too much. However, I have to admit I was disappointed that they only had a few scenes from the bootlegged version of "Eurotrip" that the writers found in New York City three months before the official DVD release (I have found memories of the bootlegged version of "Return of the Jedi," with the camera trying to keep up with the talking heads being on the left and then the right in the final scene between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker). In addition to being able to go directly to the nude scenes you can do the same for the unrated scenes (yes, there actually is a difference with regards to one or two of those).