By: debbie lynn elias
21 AND OVER is not for the faint of heart, not for those that can’t remember the stupidity of youth, not those offended by social incorrectness and not for those that can’t appreciate a film for the spirit and context with which it is made. Having said that, 21 AND OVER is raucous, riotous, uproarious ridiculum that will, at times, have your sides hurting from laughing so hard. Written by, and making their directorial debut, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the team that brought us The Hangover, with 21 & OVER they pull out the stops and go for the comedic jugular and the heart. As opined by Moore, “[t]his movie is really about this friendship and that point in your life where people go off to college and after high school they go different directions, and do you have the wherewithal to keep the friendship together or are you going to make new friends and that’s just the way life goes?
Sparked by fantastic chemistry between Skylar Astin and Miles Teller, showcasing the deadpan comedic styling of Sarah Wright and the physical antics of Justin Chon, 21 AND OVER is not only filled with laughs, but at its core, be you 21, 31, 41, 51 or 61, 21 & OVER hits you with beats of days gone by and above all – friendship.
Miller, Casey and JeffChang have been best friends for life. But, after high school, each embarked on what they envisioned as their life path. For Casey, that means academics to lead him to a high profile suit & tie job on Wall Street, for JeffChang it means following in the family footsteps of medical school and for Miller, well, it’s all about fly by the seat of his pants. Determined to bring the boys together to celebrate JeffChang’s 21st birthday, Miller plans a surprise visit by he and Casey to hook up, hang out and party hearty as JeffChang turns 21. But what Miller didn’t think about was JeffChang who is stressed beyond belief to perform well the next morning at a medical school meeting, orchestrated and forced on him by his father. Eventually enticing the party animal within JeffChang, and given assurances by Miller and Casey that they will get him home early enough to rest up and prepare for his meeting, the trio heads out for a night they will soon not forget.
What should have been making the rounds of a few bars, flaunting the “Now I’m 21” ID to the bouncers, quickly turns into total debauchery on the part of JeffChang as he drinks himself into oblivion, rides a mechanical bull while projectile vomiting, passes out, gets stripped naked and has a teddy bear glued to his penis, gets thrown off a roof, and all the while Casey and Miller are trying to get him home. Of course Casey and Miller have their own high-spirited antics going on when they break into a sorority, piss off the campus RA, get charged by a buffalo and other assorted goodness. Only problem is they don’t know where he lives and he’s incoherent. With a little help from the lovely co-ed Nicole, for whom Casey immediately has eyes, we’re along for the chaotic fun.
If he stays on this current path, Miles Teller is a man who will be around for years to come, making a huge mark on the acting world. Likeable beyond belief both onscreen and off, in 21 AND OVER, he is the perfect best friend. As Miller, there is never a moment that you doubt his loyalty to his friends. Perhaps a bit goofy and lacking direction of life, but you’re a lucky guy or gal to have Miller on your side. As much as Teller stunned us with his sensitivity and the deliberateness of his dramatic skills in his feature debut in Rabbit Hole opposite Nicole Kidman, he then made us fall in love with the innocence and fun he brought to Willard in Footloose (he had tough shoes to fill with the character as Chris Penn’s performance was so indelible and so beloved). And now here, he steals the show with rapid-fire patter, superb comedic timing that he executes often with a pragmatic nonchalant wink-and-a-smile. Even when Miller is getting his best friend Jeff Chang bombed on his 21st birthday, Teller still gives him heart and likeability. He makes this character the guy you want as a best friend through thick and thin.
Hand in hand with Teller’s performance is his chemistry with Skylar Astin. Easy, believable, comfortable. These two are a perfect yin & yang, Hope & Crosby, Martin & Lewis. As Casey, the level-headed third cog in the best friend triumvirate, Astin grounds the film and keeps it from going off the deep end with college hijinks. As he puts it, “You gotta have a moral compass of the movie and you’re got to steer the ship a little bit.” He has an ease about him that is welcoming but that also bodes a mature, yet fun, air. He’s the guy that you know you can always count in. “It’s not hard to play a role that’s close to my age, close to home and in a movie that I would go see if I wasn’t [already] in it.” But the magic truly comes with the Teller-Astin pairing.
Setting the tone of hilarious hijinks is the film’s opening scene and narrative with bare ass naked Teller and Astin walking through a campus quad wearing nothing but “***k socks.” It takes a brave soul to pull this off but for these two it was apparently a piece of cake. As observer Sarah Wright recalls, “You should have seen them. They were so proud of their socks. They were walking around with their robes off.” Rebuking Wright, Astin quickly notes, “It was supposed to be approached very delicately and we re told it was going to be a closed set, and it was going to be the warmest day of the shoot. Turns out it was freezing and everyone’s there. Actually at our first costume fitting they just hold [up] literally a sock and an underneath sock to keep everything in place and we’re like ‘Here’s your fitting.’ At first we had a moment where it was like “fight or flight’ and I was like, ‘Let’s just do it. We have to do it eventually. And I just de-robed. I don’t think I was proud, but I had to play the role of being okay with it.”
With 21 AND OVER, Sarah Wright finally gets a meatier role and one that lets her show her comedic chops. A dead ringer for a young Nicole Eggert, I have watched Wright – who ironically plays a character named “Nicole” – with tiny no name episodic tv roles and even some tiny movie roles for almost 20 years. The cuteness that caught one’s attention in the past has morphed into a cute sexiness as she has gotten older. But the key to Wright, as we see in 21 AND OVER, is the intelligence and slightly sarcastic deadpan that she brings to the performance. Describing Nicole as a “total free spirit and someone that wants to have a good time and is very open…she meets these guys and is open to this new love…I felt like that was me when I was out of high school and starting to travel and find my own way.”, Wright believes “It made me feel very connected to her.” Although I believe she’s underused, Wright perfectly fits the bill of socially conscious, academic, friendly, and still fun-loving college gal. The cheerleader who found herself.
And then there’s Justin Chon’s Jeff Chang, the 21 year old birthday boy. Chon is pure drunken revelry for 2/3rds of the film, not to mention bare ass naked but for a teddy bear “glued” to his penis. Yes, you read correctly. And as this is such a prominent visual in the movie, I HAD to ask him about affixing the bear. “They had a couple different ones. You know how bra straps have that material that’s kind of nude looking? We had one like that. We had an underwear one and a pouch drawstring one. The pouch drawstring one hurt like shit because if you’re running, it will fly off so you have to [tie] it pretty tight. After an hour my balls are hurting like a mother fucker. I would have to loosen it in the bathroom and chill out. That one was the one that looks the most real but it hurt the most.” But in the spirit of a true actor, Chon proudly avows, “You gotta pay to play!”
As if a bear tied tightly to his penis isn’t enough, Chon also braved the brunt of the film’s physical comedy. With everything from being shoved into the windshield of a Smart Car, to being thrown off the roof of a building, to running, falling and, of course, riding a mechanical bull “drunk” and vomiting mid-ride, Chon handled everything like a veteran stunt man and actor. And while he unabashedly admits that while being thrown around everything “hurt “, the greatest discomfort came when being “passed out” and carried/dragged by Teller and Astin. “Being carried was the most painful because you have to be dead weight. Your arm starts stretching and it hurts pretty bad.”
Co-written by those brash “young” men behind The Hangover movies and others, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore also make their directorial debut with 21 AND OVER. With their prior films based in characters in their mid-20’s and 30’s, dialing back the years to 21 was one of the first bug hurdles for the pair. According to Lucas, “We write from a place of nostalgia. I don’t know if that comes through, but that’s why I think these movies don’t just hit a 17-year-old audience. It’s because everyone has that fond memory of being young and dumb and making fabulously bad choices and then laughing about it the next day.” Moore echoes those sentiments noting, “We often write about fond memories. We both had a really fun college experience. I think a lot of our movies are sort of the life that we wish we had and how we imagine that to be. Our drinking stories are also pretty boring, but as you keep telling that story, it gets to be a funnier, bigger story. It’s just imagining yourself being in that world again.”
But for a film like 21 AND OVER, what do you do to insure the age appropriate conduct of your characters? For Lucas, the answer is easy. “You hire young actors. We wrote stuff and then we were like, ‘Does this sound like old people writing it?’ and [the actors] would fix things. They would come in and we’d be like, ‘Say it the way you’d naturally say it’ which we’ve always done on everything we’ve worked on. It always sounds better when an actor is just saying it as opposed to actors trying to hit their mark and do their line.”
While many may find some of the stereotypical elements of personality, ethnicity, frat boys and college life “old hat” or even “offensive, it’s this meld of stereotypes which create plot devices to move the film along. Each sets the stage for fun and frolic and stupid antics, but with the obvious exaggeration that comes with each, makes a tacit statement. I really appreciate that aspect of the creative construct. Astin is particularly thoughtful on the division of time for each actor. “We all got our opportunity to be funny. Especially [Sarah Wright].”
Pleasantly surprising is that there’s an actual story, with a moral and a message. This could have been just a “kegger movie”, but it isn’t. There is a developed story. Principal characters are resonating, believable and solid. Story has specific situations, consequences, moral dilemmas, the crossing of teen to adult dilemmas with the trials and tribulations of being best friends at the heart of it all. If you look and listen, you will find that each of us has faced these same dilemmas at some point in our lives. And yes, there is absolute political and gender incorrectness, but that is part of the nature of this beast.
When it comes to their co-directing, Astin finds it advantageous that Lucas and Moore are also the writers as “it all comes directly from one vessel. That’s really great as an actor to have that wealth of knowledge coming from two voices.”
Although on the surface it may not appear so, any time you have a film like 21 AND OVER with this style and magnitude of “antics” and “action”, safety is a concern, and with good cause. The college mascot, a buffalo/bison, being a major one, especially since they decided to work with a real buffalo while having a “Stuffalo” as his stunt double. The absolutely most adorable thing on screen, the buffalo was also a favorite of the cast. Described by Wright as “trained and really smart”, Astin’s excitement comes from the fact “They let me pet him. His wrangler was like, ‘He’s real friendly. Don’t touch his horns though!!!’ They say they are trained and you want to believe that, but when there’s a huge bonfire and there’s 700 extras screaming and you have a live animal that’s supposed to be caged, well….”
But injury did occur to Miles Teller. As Astin tells it, “”I was supposed to speed off in a golf cart and Miles was supposed to jump on it. Due to extras being kinda out of place and some props being strewn about, I had to quickly swerve as Miles was getting onto the golf cart. I thought he was on there – he thought he was on there. I literally threw him under the bus and ran over his foot. He soldiered on and finished the rest of the shoot in crutches – put some dirt on it. It’s funny – we did that sequence three times and the one that we did for ‘safety’ [extra shot] ended up not being.” Lucas’ first reaction to the injury was, “Throw some dirt on it. We’ve got to shoot all night.” Then your line producer comes up to you and he’s like, ‘We can’t really say that. We’ve got to take him to the hospital.’. . . [Miles Teller] was a trooper because basically for the entire last week of shooting he had a broken foot. And there are a few places that I notice still. No one else would notice because we cut around it pretty well. . .We’re lucky we only had a broken foot.” Of course Teller jokingly makes sure to let everyone know, “It’s still not healed.”
Beyond any perceived social incorrectness, there are some so-so aspects of the film due in part to pacing of editing and repetitive tedium, most notably “The Tower of Power” and the amount of bars that JeffChang hits – not only stupidity, but ridiculously impossible and tedious to watch. Similarly, naked breasts at the parties seemed gratuitous.
Granted, while many may not see the humor that I see in the situation, if you look at the film in the context of its intent – youth, college, fighting inner demons of turning 21 and hating what your parents want you to do but doing it out of fear and obligation, and, of course, the rocky road of friendship, then 21 AND OVER is your ticket for fun.
Buffalos, balls and bears, Oh My! Besties, booze and bulls, Oh My!
Written and Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
Cast: Miles Teller, Skylar Astin, Sarah Wright and Justin Chon
