Skylar Astin

’21 & Over’ – Crap from the Past and from the Writers of ‘The Hangover’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Honestly, I did not laugh once during “21 and Over.” Maybe I chuckled a bit at one or two scenes, but that really doesn’t qualify as a laugh. This film is essentially a rip-off of “The Hangover” with elements of “Superbad” thrown in for good measure. It aspires to be a classic comedy like those films and even “Animal House” and “Adventures in Babysitting” among others, but it does not come even close to their hilarity or greatness. Regardless of the strong comic energy put forth by the cast here, this film is a complete waste of time and is honestly, at times, quite offensive.

Lifelong friends Miller (Miles Teller) and Casey (Skylar Astin) are in town to pick up their friend Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) and take him out for the time of his life. Yes, the main reason for this is that his twenty-first birthday has arrived, and they are not about to let him celebrate it alone. But wouldn’t you know it, he has a very important medical school interview the following morning, and his dad, who is played by François Chau (yes, Shredder from the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movies), is deadly serious about his son living up to the family name. Regardless, Miller and Casey are determined to take him out to celebrate, and Jeff agrees to go out as long as he is restricted to only one drink.

But of course, this would not be a motion picture without disaster courting these characters. Realizing he can now go to all these college bars he was once denied entrance to, Jeff goes insane and drinks every single bit of alcohol he can get his hands on at all of them. Things come to a gross climax when he rides a mechanical bull similar to one at the Saddle Ranch Chop House off of Sunset Boulevard, and it is very unsurprising when he vomits all over the place. The filmmakers go out of their way to show this character vomiting in slow motion, but it proves to be far more disgusting than it is amusing. Heck, Linda Blair vomiting pea soup at Jason Miller in “The Exorcist” was far more amusing than this, and that was a horror movie!

From there, Miller and Casey have to get Jeff home and ready for his big interview, but they soon discover they do not remember his address. Never mind how they were there earlier in the day; these douchebags do not even have Jeff’s address on them! Great, wonderful. So, from there, these three go through a lot of crazy adventures as Miller and Casey try to get Jeff’s address from different people, and you know they are not going to get the answer they are looking for until it is almost too late to do so.

Everything in “21 and Over” feels so very recycled from all those comedies we loved watching growing up. When Miller and Casey end up breaking into a female Latino sorority, in the process of trying to get Jeff’s address, they get two girls to make out with each other just because they can. Then there is a character who mistakes a tampon for a candy bar, an obnoxious jock looking to beat up anybody just because he can, and we of course get an obligatory scene of Miller and Casey being forced to make out with one another. That particular scene has been done to death in just about every Adam Sandler comedy ever made as well as “American Pie “2, and the fact the filmmakers still use this device is just tiresome because the audience’s reaction to it says more about them than anyone else.

Our main characters are also forced to go nude in several scenes with nothing but a tube sock or a teddy bear to cover their privates. Now I have seen far too many comedies to find this bit the least bit amusing anymore. Besides the Red Hot Chili Peppers did this same gag to greater effect years ago when these actors we see here were just babies. By the time this came up, I was very ready to leave the theater because the odds of anything original happening after this felt completely moot.

Furthermore, these characters end up saying some of the most asinine dialogue I have heard any character say in a long time. While it may be designed to make them sound hip and cool, they instead come across as homophobic and borderline racist. Miller, in particular, keeps making statements about different races and nationalities which need to be heard to be believed. I think the writers wanted Miller to be like Zach Galifianakis’ character from “The Hangover,” but while the latter was so funny because he never fully understood what was coming out of his mouth, Miller is clearly someone who should know better about what he is saying.

There is even another scene where Casey, while making small talk with the lovely coed Nicole (Sarah Wright), explains why he isn’t interested in joining a fraternity. Now I’m not going to repeat exactly what Casey said, but I can say that the audience I saw it with reacted in shock to what they heard. If it was intended to be funny, it failed miserably.

“21 and Over” marks the directorial debut of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore who, coincidentally, are the same two people who wrote the screenplay for “The Hangover.” They have said that “21 and Over” is not meant to be a copy of “The Hangover,” but I that they are just fooling themselves. This movie more or less has the same setup, and the only real difference is that none of the characters are trying to figure out what they did the night before because they know all the gory details which led them to where they are at. While Lucas and Moore are nice guys, they cannot hide how there is nothing here to set this movie apart from so many other comedies which came before it.

Still, I do have to give the actors some credit. While they are stuck with a script which clearly needed more work, they throw themselves into their performances with sheer comic abandon. Teller, whom we have gotten to know very well from the “Footloose” remake, “Whiplash” and “Top Gun: Maverick” does not is hold anything back as Miller, and he is a very talented actor. Astin, whom you might remember from “Pitch Perfect,” does have a very charming quality about him. Then there is Chon who managed to free himself from all those “Twilight” movies before this one, and he does pull off making Jeff look believably drunk. But in the end, their efforts do not matter much because this motion picture still sucks to an infinite degree.

When I turned 21 years old, my birthday celebration was nothing like the one portrayed here. In retrospect, I am thankful for that as what everyone goes through in “21 and Over” is more horrific than funny. There are few things more depressing in life than a comedy which does not make you laugh, and this is one of them.

½* out of * * * *

WRITER’S NOTE: Back in 2013 when “21 and Over” was released, the website VeryAware.com, in an article written by Courtney Howard, said there will be a very different version of it shown in China. It turns out Chinese companies put a lot of money into the making of this film and, as a result, it is being re-cut for their more conservative audiences. What they will end up seeing is a movie about how Jeff Chang leaves China to study in the United States and ends up being corrupted by “Western partying ways.” Apparently, it starts with Jeff at a Chinese college, and scenes for the movie were shot in the city of Linyi, Shandong province to reflect this. It will end with Jeff returning to China and realizing that his time in the U.S. was just a bad idea.

Will we ever get to see this version in America? Odds are it will be far more interesting than what we got here.

Skylar Astin on Being the Moral Compass in ’21 & Over’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This interview took place back in 2013.

Skylar Astin has had the privilege of entertaining us onstage in the Tony Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening” and onscreen in movies like “Hamlet 2” where he sang the song “Raped in the Face” and “Pitch Perfect” in which he appeared opposite Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson. Now he’s starring in “21 and Over,” the comedy which marks the directorial debut of “The Hangover” screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Astin plays Casey who quickly proves to be the moral compass the other main characters need to survive the mess they end up getting caught in.

I got to catch up with Astin while at the “21 and Over” press conference held at the Saddle Ranch Chop House off of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Now when it comes to college comedies like this one, most actors would prefer to play the character who is wild and crazy and comes across as the life of the party. Casey, however, is exactly the opposite of that even though he gets into as much trouble as his friends do. Still, Astin saw the benefits of playing such a level headed and grounded character in this film.

Skylar Astin: “You’ve got to have a moral compass of the movie and you got to like steer the ship a little. It’s cool that we all got our opportunity to be funny though.”

One pivotal scene in “21 and Over” has Astin and his co-star Miles Teller walking around campus wearing nothing but a tube sock over their privates. Now this could not have been a very comfortable scene to do, especially when you have a lot of people on set looking at you and wondering how much time you spent at the gym. Astin talked in detail about he approached this scene in the film which was filmed in Seattle, Washington.

Skylar Astin: “Funny enough, it was supposed to be approached very delicately. We were told that it was going to be a closed set and that it was gonna be the warmest day of the shoot. It turns out that it’s freezing, everyone’s there, and actually at our first costume fitting they just had a sock and a little underneath sock to keep everything in place and they’re like ‘here’s your fitting!’ At first, we had a moment of where it was like fight or flight, and I think I was just like ‘let’s just do it man. We have to do it eventually.’ I just de-robed and was like this is everything I got. I don’t think I was like proud, but I just had to play the role of being okay with it. I had the idea of making the whole crew where just socks and they didn’t oblige, especially the women, but it worked out thankfully.”

In the film, Astin and Teller take their best friend from high school, Jeff Chang (played by Justin Chon), to celebrate his 21st birthday in an appropriately drunken style. Now the really good actors are able to draw on their own experiences when playing the role, and we couldn’t help but wonder if Astin has been through similar nights in his own life. It was actually a bit surprising to hear the similarities he shares with Casey.

Skylar Astin: “Personally for me, my younger brother is my best friend and my partner in crime and I’ve definitely had several nights that had the spirit of this movie. I’ve always been the one that has a good time, but at the end of the bender it’s like ‘both of our phones are dead and we both have to call our parents and tell them we’re alive.’ That’s kind of always been my responsibility so I can relate to the feeling of just being a little irritable on those nights but also letting loose and have a good time. There is a little bit of Casey in me, but I don’t think I’m as much of an over thinker though. I always try to draw from personal experiences and my own personality whenever I play a role, and it’s not hard to play a role that close to my age, close to home and in a movie that I would go see if I wasn’t in it.”

Working with two different directors on the same film must seem challenging as this is typically a one-person job. What if one director tells you to do one thing and the other director instructs you to do the exact opposite? Where do you draw the line? Astin, however, said both Lucas and Moore were on the same page as they had written the screenplay together and have been friends for many years. As a result, there was never any conflict between either of them.

Skylar Astin: “What they have in common is that they are both the writers so it comes directly from one vessel. That’s always really great as an actor to have that wealth of knowledge coming from two voices. For me, I loved the different kinds of conversations that I would have with each one. Since I had a love story on top of the funny moments, there were different kind of conversations like the leading man type of thing I would have with Moore and to be more sincere in certain moments, and then Lucas was great because he was giving me jokes every five minutes. So, I had this well-rounded voice coming from two different people. They worked together so well, and they almost know this age better than I do and I’m closer to it. It’s kind of crazy.”

For a film filled with such drunken debauchery as “21 and Over,” Skylar Astin proves to be the most well-rounded person these characters need to get them through the night. It is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.

‘Hamlet 2,’ A Most Unusual and Unexpected Sequel

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: Eddie Pence selected this as his Video Vault pick on the August 15, 2020 episode of “The Ralph Report.” But while the host of the podcast, Ralph Garman, was not particularly crazy about it, I think it is better than Garman gives it credit.

“Hamlet 2” starts off with an invisible voice telling us that to be an actor, you have to live in a dream. But dreams do die however, and the question posed here is this: Where dreams go when they die? Well, if you are Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan), then you go to Tucson, Arizona to spend the rest of your life teaching high school drama. Being an actor myself, there is something quite scary about the fate of this particular actor who is best known for his herpes medication commercials. Here in Arizona, he hopes to pass on his love of acting to high school students, and this is the thrust of the plot which powers up a motion picture dealing with one of the most unlikely sequels ever to be created.

“Hamlet 2” was a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival, and while it didn’t quite live up to the hype in my eyes, it was still a very clever movie which kept me entertained from beginning to end. It is a hilarious look at how art can never truly be suppressed, and this includes art which was never all that good to begin with.

We meet up with Dana Marschz sometime into his career as a high school teacher, and he only has two students, Rand Posin (Skylar Astin) and Epiphany Sellers (Phoebe Strole), who really seem to care about drama and acting. His latest class, he discovers, is largely populated by Latino students who are in attendance because their other electives have been cut, and drama is the only one left. It reminds me of all those high school kids with who were in drama class because was the only one they could get an easy A in other than physical education. Dana, however, is convinced this is being presented to him as a challenge he must face with no fear. While these students may seem unenthusiastic about drama, he is determined to change their minds.

Dana’s existence is a recovering alcoholic with a wife named Brie (played by the great Catherine Keener) who drinks a margarita from a gigantic martini glass. They also have a boarder, Gary, (David Arquette) who is sleeping with Brie while Dana rollerblades to school because he cannot afford a car. His gift to the high school is plays he wrote which are direct adaptations of the movies “Erin Brockovich” and “Dead Poets Society.” Still, they get ripped to pieces by a young critic who shows no mercy for Dana’s passion. Dana’s basic cry for all the negative criticism is, “He fisted us!”

Dana ends up conversing with this unsympathetic teenage critic to seek inspiration, and he suggests to Dana that he write something original and put everything into it. Thus, he comes up with what in many ways is a completely unnecessary sequel to one of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, “Hamlet.” There is a rather large problem though as just about every character dies at the play’s end. But Dana, still up for an artistic challenge, remains undeterred by this, and he comes up with a device to solve this problem in the form of a time machine. Upon discovering the rather racy nature of the play, the most suburban students do everything they can to keep it from being performed, but Dana ends up proving to everyone that you cannot stop art.

It’s a little hard for me to critique “Hamlet 2” objectively because Dana’s fate is one I hope to avoid. It is made clear from the outset that he is not particularly talented, and we get a montage of scenes featuring him as an actor. The funniest one is a commercial he did for Herpes medication as he tells us, “Right now, I am having a herpes outbreak. But you wouldn’t know it!”

In the process of writing and directing his sequel play, it gets banned from being performed at the high school, and Dana ends up inspiring the Latino kids to put it on at another location. He even gets help from the ACLU to keep his play from being censored. Talk about free publicity!

“Hamlet 2” is a terrific star vehicle for Coogan, and he is never afraid to make himself look completely silly. He shows no fear in portraying Dana as a complete failure both as an actor and a drama teacher. That he somehow inspired these students who have grown up in a far different environment than his is pretty amazing. But in the end, it doesn’t matter if Dana is really bad or good because he gets the play up to the excitement and infuriation of everyone in Tucson, Arizona, the city where dreams come to die. Coogan proves to be a brilliant comic actor here, and he still is all these years later.

The director and co-writer of “Hamlet 2” is Andrew Fleming, and he does a good job of not taking things too seriously. Fleming started off his career as the writer and director of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” wannabe, “Bad Dreams” (this title tells you all you need to know). From there, he went on to direct “Threesome,” “The Craft,” “Dick,” and “Nancy Drew.” Suffice to say, he has been around for a while, and this film proved to be one of his stronger efforts.

“Hamlet 2” also features a terrific performance from Elisabeth Shue who plays herself here. In this movie, she has given up on acting and appears to be much happier working as a nurse in a sperm bank. Dana goes gaga over Shue and invites her to speak with his class, but they have no idea who she is. We all remember her from “The Karate Kid,” and she earned a much-deserved Oscar nomination for her unforgettable performance in “Leaving Las Vegas,” but over the years her star has not ascended in the way we thought it would. Still, she works constantly and is always on the verge of giving us her next memorable performance. And, as “Hamlet 2” shows, she has a great sense of humor about herself.

Anybody who has ever been involved with community theater or in high school plays will get a kick out of this film. In retrospect, the high school students were the ones who manage to get the show up and running, and this is shown here. That Dana manages to inspire these kids through his embarrassing ways is astonishing. When you are already deep into the production of a show and your director flakes out or becomes useless, you can’t just give up. As Dana’s personal life hits rock bottom, it’s those kids who pull him up from the abyss.

I also like how “Hamlet 2” got into the conflicts Dana has with the school and parents because everyone in these situations always acts in an overly conservative way. As time goes on, I get more interested in what does not offend people because it seems like we are always looking to get mad about something. Granted, you can see why people might object to Jesus Christ kissing Satan or with a song entitled “Rock Me Sexy Jesus,” a song which was criminally robbed of an Oscar nomination. But everyone in the end is saved due to the protected freedom of the 1st amendment of the Constitution. That pisses a lot of people off, but that’s their problem.

The ACLU eventually gets involved when the show is threatened to be shut down, and a lawyer comes to visit Mr. Marschz to lend her help. She is played in a kick ass scene stealing performance by Amy Poehler. Her character of Cricket Feldstein is a ball buster about protecting the production, and she makes sure everyone involved gets to put it up. Her disinterest in whether or not the play is any good (“It’s irrelevant,” she says) is hilarious, and Poehler continues to show why she is one of the funniest actresses ever.

“Hamlet 2” is a lot of fun to watch, and the play which comes out of it is a hoot as it is a quasi-musical in which Hamlet and Jesus team up to change the past. Granted, they take all the drama and tragedy out of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” but it is a little hard at times to argue with Dana who calls the play “a real downer.” In addition to “Rock Me Sexy Jesus,” there is another song called “Raped in The Face” which is Dana’s stab at the critics who keep taking apart his plays based on movies. The song title alone demands your complete attention.

All the same, I wished the filmmakers had pushed the envelope a bit more. Seriously, you have to expect some envelope pushing when one of the writers, Pam Brady, is from “South Park.” I’m not saying “Hamlet 2” had to be insidiously evil, I just wished the satire in parts was a little sharper. Or perhaps I got a little depressed with Dana’s station in life because it is one I hope to avoid in my own life, and this made it hard for me to be more objective about what I saw. Still, this comedic film has stayed with me since I first saw it, and at some point, I need to watch it again.

Shakespeare once wrote about how all the world is a stage, and he was absolutely right. We are all merely players in this crazy thing called life, and “Hamlet 2” plays with this to such an enthusiastic extent to where I wonder if another “Hamlet” sequel is in our future. Or better yet, maybe we can get a “Romeo & Juliet” sequel as young love does not have to be so infinitely depressing. Seriously, everyone deserves a second chance.

* * * out of * * * *