Films like this are the Hollywood equivalent of the Old West's Boot Hill cemeteries. While those were filled with shallow graves of young gunfighters who weren't nearly as fast as they thought, movies like American Hormones are filled with people whose dreams of stardom begin and end in these insulting awful mistakes of cinema...or at least they ought to. These productions start with producers who don't know what the hell they're doing, rope in writers who can't handle anything more complicated than fortune cookie slogans, hand the reins to directors who barely know which end of the camera to look through and put on display gaggles of young actors who really should have taken that community college class on welding. Everyone involved thinks they're going to be the Next Big Thing, but they're lucky to avoid totally humiliating themselves.
To start with, the DVD calls this film "American Hormones". The opening credits, however, simply title it "Hormones". That means after it was finished, this thing bounced from place to place and hand to hand until it ended up with someone who didn't give the two craps needed to either stick with the original title or re-edit 5 seconds of it to give it a new one. I'm not saying it deserved more consideration, but that let's you know up front what you're in for when watching this.
The story begins with 3 guys and 5 girls yakking to each other on a beach. Domino (Anthony Marquez) is hopelessly in love with Brittany (Britton Mizell). Kevin (David McCullough) has been dating Mischa (Marina Resa) for two years. Jackson (Cory King) says he's caught between going after Tracy (Eevy Marie) and Jen (Katie Kocis), though since Jen isn't at the beach he starts flirting with Tracy and never gives the other girl a look. In fact, I'm not even sure if those two characters ever actually meet. The other two girls at the beach are Vernie (Amanda Carneiro), who might as well be named "I Can't Believe It's Not Zooey Deschanel", and slutty bitch Kris (Thelis Negron).
Things then segue to a party at Brittany's house where the 8 characters we already know and a bunch more who are barely even named "party" all over the place. There's a lot of thuddingly unfunny comedy, dialog that sounds like it was written by someone raised in a sensory deprivation tank, one set of bare breasts and an intrusive subplot involving a pathetic nerd and his needy, overprotective mother that comes out of nowhere and disappears back there. One of the producers HAD to have been banging the actress playing the mom. There's no other possible explanation.
Let me give you a list of some of the stuff that happens in American Hormones and you can judge for yourself if this sounds like the motion picture for you.
1. Domino gets an attack of diarrhea twice.
2. Domino also wears two different shirts at different times throughout the party and it's obvious they only noticed it at the end of shooting, causing them to add a scene establishing that he was wearing one shirt under the other. Why he took off and put on that outer shirt numerous times was apparently too much of a challenge for them to take on.
3. A guy eats a pan full of Domino's diarrhea, thinking it's chili. The character, who's a full blown "wigger", has some sort of a sinus problem and can't smell it, which is why it's supposed to be funny. That human beings also possess a sense of taste seems to have never occurred to these filmmakers.
4. At the end, all of the major characters show up at the same storefront café on the first day of school, but none of them order anything or get noticed by anyone working there. Which makes perfect sense, of course, because what do store owners love more than high schoolers loitering without buying anything? And considering how early classes begin and how much teenagers loathe waking up, what kind of kids start off the school day by congregating in a café before the first bell?
5. After first establishing that Brittany is Domino's dream girl, the film then decides they're lifelong friends who basically grew up together. However, it also establishes that Brittany is the new girl at Domino's high school and doesn't really know anyone else. How can all three of those things be true?
6. The one scene involving bare breasts also just happens to involve the screenwriter, who also happens to be both a producer and executive producer of the film. That he's the one who ended up in a bathtub with a hot topless chick was just his good luck, I'm sure.
7. The last scene involves Domino at the high school but you can tell from the way it's shot, they clearly didn't have permission to be there.
8. The movie takes an unprovoked shot at John Travolta that doesn't fit with any of the rest of the dialog.
9. An annoying guitar riff that reoccurs on the soundtrack will make you want to hit something with the claw side of a hammer.
10. Though the film is intended to celebrate teenage debauchery, it stops to put on an anti-drunk driving PSA and then manages the world's worst PSA for National Coming Out Day.
Now you know and knowing is half the battle.
By the way, the one person here who manages to NOT humiliate herself is Katie Kocis. I'm not saying she's great or anything, but she's at least able to imbue an irritatingly written character with some likability. Good for her.
3 out of 5 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
