Project X: It’s all about one epic party

What would you wish for if all your dreams could come true? If you had one chance to set everything right into place the way you wanted it, would you take the chance no matter the risk, no matter the outcome? It is kind of a story of life to take your chances and hope that everything falls into place the way you want it to. That is the story of Project X, the 2012 directorial debut of Nima Nourizadeh which was co-written by Matt Drake and Michael Bacall and produced by Todd Phillips.

Thomas is a nobody in high school. The jocks make fun of him and he is afraid to lift his head from fear of ridicule and failure. His two best friends decide to throw him a party for his 17^th birthday on the weekend that his parents leave town to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Costa is the loud mouthed, obnoxious teenager who is always in praise of himself while putting others down while J.B. is the soft spoken, naive one who goes along with the ride and plays the game. Costa convinces Thomas to let him host a huge party at his house and everything gets blown out of proportion as the crowd turns out to be larger than anticipated. The hosts struggle to keep the party going as the party poopers come knocking on the door to shut down their shenanigans.

The film is about an introverted high school teenager who wants to be noticed. It is about a group of friends trying to make a name for themselves by throwing a huge party and hoping that everything goes according to plan. Although the drastic scale to which the event goes out of control is well beyond the bounds of imagination, the final outcome is a sort of morbid perfection. It is a case where things just seem to perfectly work out in favour of the characters, the script and the director. The way that things just seem to fit into place at the end isn’t particularly believable but it is acceptable all the same.

The entire plot of the film revolves around the party. The main action takes place during the course of the party with everything preceding and following it being only a set up or an outcome in the plot which is a direct relation to the event of the birthday party. As such, the whole plot rests entirely on the way the party was executed in the film. The use of home video style footage was a refreshing technique to make the film interesting and is generally appealing. The actors, who are relatively unknown, have done a good job to make the characters endearing.

The film is all about one epic party. And the proportion to which the film takes it is marvellous. It is a youth-oriented film; not one that all ages will necessarily enjoy. It is fun and vibrant but applauds behaviour that is otherwise considered as morally wayward. Although most would probably enjoy this commercial production, quite a few may have an alternate opinion.