Miss March (2009)

Directed by Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore
Starring the same dudes, Craig Robinson, Raquel Allesi
Unrated (Rated R in theaters)
USA

"Well the country is like, what, 10 states wide? And each state is roughly 100 miles across. So that's like 1000 miles. We're going about 60 miles an hour, so we should be there in like 600 minutes."

The problem, going in on this one, is that you know we're going to end up with a gratuitous Hugh Hefner cameo, and honestly, how lame is Playboy? Hustler, now there's a magazine with balls. Larry Flynt must have a mansion, right? Or at least some kind of slave pit. If they shot it with a phelgmy, garble-y Flynt cameo, we might be in business. But they did not. So, you've got this creaky puffball nudie mag from 1847 colliding headfirst with "The Whitest Kids U Know" an 'edgy' sketch comedy crew last seen haunting the dead zones in IFC's schedule, now forced to bleed their satire thin enough to get their dumb boner movie greenlit by the squares in Hollywood. The result? A whopping 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, and tumbleweeds in the theaters. But hey, the DVD version is unrated! That extra set of tits is going to make all the difference, I am sure of it.

So, Eugene (Zach Cregger) and Tucker (Trevor Moore) have been best bros since fourth grade.
They're high school seniors now, and they're gearing up for prom night. Tucker - the Shaggy-esque hipster doofus of the two - has become a motor-mouthed cocksman, while Eugene is a voracious abstinence advocate, since his older brother went insane from Syphilis and killed his parents and burned their house down (or whatever happened. This movie is difficult to pay close attention to). He's dating a semi-hot girl named Cindi (Raquel Allesi) but they have so far resisted any fleshly temptations. She thinks they're finally ready to go all the way, however, and Eugene agrees to have sex with her after prom. Tucker gives him some helpful advice ("Shave your cock, it makes it look bigger"), and away they go.

They get picked up in a stretch limo by Tucker's friend MC Horsedick Dot Mpeg (Craig Robinson, AKA Daryl from The Office, AKA the go-to black guy for absurdly white movies like this), who actually dropped out of school years ago, but is going to prom anyway, because he's now a hip-hop star. Well, a fledgling one. He's "got some tracks on the internet", at least. The usual prom night vomit gags ensue (to cut costs, all the prom action happens inside the limo), and then we cut to the after-party.

Cindi tells Eugene to meet her upstairs in five minutes. He gets another pep talk from Tucker ("You're lucky. You're losing your virginity to a girl you love. And she loves you back. Which means you might get anal."), and then Eugene heads off to his deflowerment.

Unfortunately, he never gets there. He opens the wrong door, falls down a flight of stairs, and ends up in a coma for four years. He finally wakes up when Tucker hits him in the face with a baseball bat. Naturally, Eugene wants to know where his girlfriend is. The answer arrives in Tucker's mailbox when he receives the new issue of Playboy. Turns out Cindi is the centerfold. Miss March, in fact. It also turns out that the annual "Playboy Bash" is happening at the mansion in a week, so our heroes must quickly embark on a road trip to fetch Eugene's long lost love.

Not a bad premise, as far as teen sex comedies go. Of course, it's been a half-hour at this point, and so far, no nudity or laughs, but hope springs eternal. By the way, they show a quick glimpse of Cindi's centerfold, and she's not naked in it. In the fuckin' Playboy centerfold. Holy smokes, is this a lame movie. So, they make plans to leave on Saturday morning, but then Tucker buys a stripper pole for Candace (Molly Stanton), his epileptic girlfriend.

She performs a sexy striptease, and then goes down on him. Halfway through, he turns on a strobe light, which causes her to convulse and to clamp down on his dick. So, he stabs her in the face with a fork until she lets him go. Turns out her brother is a firefighter, so now every fire engine and fireman in town is on the lookout for Tucker. He busts Eugene out of the hospital and they head out early, barely getting out of town in one piece.

Of course, leaving town is one thing. Getting to the Playboy mansion is another story entirely.
Tucker has no idea how to even drive across the country, never mind how to actually get into Hef's mansion. But then one of Horsedick's songs comes on the radio, and the plan suddenly comes together. Now that their old rapper pal is rich and famous, surely, he can get them into Hef's house, so they decide to look him up. First, though, they burn down a motel. And then we have to take time out to watch Horsedick's new video (I think the song is called "Suck My Dick While I Fuck That Ass"...haha, funny!), which at least affords us the opportunity to ogle some extra large boobs for three seconds.

Horsedick is happy to see his old pals, and agrees to take them to the mansion on his plush tour bus. He even offers the services of his girls. Tucker takes him up on the offer, but before he can actually have sex with the booty-girl, the bus hits a bump, and she flies out the window, presumably to her death.

And then Eugene accidentally shits his pants, so they both get thrown off the bus. The fellas find themselves stranded on the highway.
"I wish Candace was here," says Tucker, lamenting the bad ending with his bite-y girlfriend.
"But she tried to kill you," Eugene reminds him.
"Yeah, but she had a car."

Luckily for them, two hot Russian lesbians (Eva Mauro, who is actually from Atlanta, and Alexis Raben, who really is from Moscow) pull up and ask them to take the wheel and drive them to Los Angeles so that they can make out with each other in the backseat. So, that works out pretty good.

They finally get to the mansion and sneak into the party dressed as fireman (Candace's brother and his fireman buddies have chased them to Los Angeles and are there to kill them, so they just snatched a couple uniforms when no one was looking). Tucker ditches the outfit and goes hunting for chicks. He runs into the Hugh Hefner 'girlfriend'/Playmate of the Year 2007, Sarah Jean Underwood, and she gives him a lecture on animal cruelty. Hef must have had that bullshit written in to make her happy. It's so awkwardly crowbar-ed in, it's almost funny. Almost.

And so, Tucker has a run-in with Hef, who gives him some great-great-grandfatherly advice, and Eugene finds Cindi, and calls her a whore. Repeatedly. And Horsedick is forced to pull down his pants, revealing that he has no actual dick at all, just balls and some sort of metal tubing. Is that why this is unrated? For the puke-worthy Frankenpenis?

Anyway, somehow, everything works out for everybody. Except for the no-dick guy, I guess.

You know, with a few nominal tweaks, this story was just told in the vastly superior Sex Drive, a film that managed to ape 80's teen raunch and add just enough contemporary elements to make it all seem fresh. Miss March, on the other hand, is tired, unfunny, and appears so desperate to please its corporate masters that you almost feel obligated to subscribe to Playboy after watching it. Don't do it, though. Playboy is horrible. Subscribe to Hustler, instead. That shit is for real.

Miss March tanked at the box office, and unless all other forms of media are zapped into oblivion, I don't see the DVD faring much better. Even the "Unrated" edition skimps on the nudity, and without it, you're left with over 90 minutes of cringe-worthy 'comedy' that we would have scoffed at even in 1985, when we generally laughed at anything. Cregger and Moore, who also wrote and directed this garbage, went right back to their sketch comedy show after this. They're probably there right now, writing gags about dudes shitting their pants.

PS: Seriously, Craig Robinson, please take a vacation. It's enough already.

- Ken McIntyre