Another Ryan Nicholson movie, and easily the most perplexing of his 4 movies I've seen so far. I remarked in my review of Hanger that I had no idea what the film was trying to accomplish, well Famine raises my sheer perplexedness up to about 1000.
Set in Sloppy Secondary High, Famine runs the gamut from amusing, bizarre, nonsensical, sexy, non nonsensical, funny, nonsensical, and nonsensical. On the plus side, there's no unnecessary build to the imbecility. Within 30 seconds you know pretty much what you're in for as you're greeted with hot chicks, nice boobs, atrocious acting and dreadful writing.
I think, and this is purely a guess, but I think that there's an attempt at satire here. The first half of the movie is decently funny either way, just based on sheer befuddlement. The lead actress, whatever the hell her motivation is, seems like she's doing a good job of pulling it off, the problem is that I have no idea what it is. She also has exquisite boobies, which never hurts. To be fair, almost all of the women in the cast are good, I just have no idea what it is they're doing. I suppose the men might be good too, if they're impetus is to be the human version of Beavis, and for all I can tell it might be.
The story is about a group of kids who were involved in hurting a teacher 5 years ago during the schools famine, which is a 24 hour hunger strike to raise awareness and earn extra credits. Don't look at me that way, that's the story. So after 5 years of no famine, the school decides to have another one and yadda yadda yadda, horror movie tropes, etc.
There's the usual Ryan Nicholson schtick at play here, although it's turned down a bit in favor of just letting a dumb script be the joke. The problem is that in much the same way one fart is funny, but 100 farts is just a big smelly mess, the movie never evolves. What's humorous in the first few minutes becomes zestless by the halfway point, and then to make matters worse the last 40 minutes devolve into the same boring, run of the mill, rather soulless, chase and slash cliche that they've spent the first 40 minutes mocking.
The kills are more standard than in any of Nicholsons previous films, though his penchant for facial scarring remains. And the over the top gross out moments are kept to a minimum, nary a vaginal close up to be found. The girls are hot, but there's never the level of nudity I was hoping for if I'm being honest. There are the odd odd scenes, such as uncontrolled semen splatter and a man trying to have sex with a swiss roll and some of the comedy in the early part of the film works pretty well. The editing and direction are competent for the most part, but there are moments where it gets really bad.
The most mainstream of Nicholsons work so far, there are glimpses of fun and glimmers of hope in Famine, but for whatever reason, even when he stumbles upon stuff that works, he can't stay focused and the entire thing just turns into a discombobulated and rather boring mess.
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