Hooking Up

I bought 400 DVD's for 50 cents each when our local rental store went out of business. In that group there were some truly awful movies, but "Hooking Up" was by far the worst of the bunch (no contest).

It occurred to me during the painful viewing process that the whole project must be one huge inside joke. The three featured actresses (a term I use loosely in this case) have minimal physical appeal. Given the target audience, it seems inconceivable that such casting choices were unintentional. Perhaps the producers just wanted to get a laugh thinking about the disappointment of anyone who rented this thing for its promised exploitation potential, only to end up with a long episode of "The Animal Planet".

The main reservation I have about this theory is that the DVD has a bunch of features: behind-the-scenes, interviews, deleted scenes, outtakes, etc. In all of this stuff I did not detect the remotest sign of the presence of any intelligent life forms associated with the project.

This looks like a 70's XXX porn movie where people without the budget or the any near approximation of the talent tried to make an actual narrative film and failed miserably. But the target audience didn't really care because, hey, it was porn. Like a porn movie, the actors in this are all WAY too old for the characters they play. Corey Feldman is supposed to be 25, but was about 40. And I'd guess all the "teenagers" are played by actors at least five or ten years older. Like a porno, the characters are all paper thin and the situations so absurd that this doesn't begin to make it as a serious drama. But if it's supposed to be a comedy, it's not funny, and some things are actually pretty damn unfunny (although the people getting offended or saying it should be "illegal" are overreacting a little).

The problem this movie has is it's NOT a porn movie. There are only a few boring boob shots of the three "teenage" actresses. Instead, it just tries to be REALLY outrageous, kind of like "Clerks", but it REALLY makes you appreciate the relative talent of Kevin Smith. Here you just have horribly misfired jokes about anal sex, incest, "virgins" who perform oral sex on everybody, "glory holes", "seagulling" (don't even ask), cocaine, girls being slapped around and called the "c word" that rhymes with "punt", and perhaps worst of all, washed-up 80's child actor Corey Feldman having sex with three different 15-year-old girls (OK, they're obviously not really 15, but still. . .). The other two name actors, Brian O'Halloran and Bronson Pinchot, manage to maintain what little dignity they had to begin with. O'Halloran plays a characters his own age (the school principal) and Pinchot plays a teacher who fends off one of the teenage girls after she slips off her thong after class and tries to seduce him (in an ACTUAL porno movie, she would certainly have succeeded).

This isn't good. It isn't so bad, it's good. But it IS bad in a horrible, slow-motion car crash kind of way. You can't easily look away (as much as you may want to), and you really have to wonder what was possibly go through anyone's mind here. I'd buy the theory of has-been actors and never-will-be filmmakers getting together to lure impressionable young actresses by making a "movie". But why actually put film in the camera? And why foist something on the public that will actually do MORE damage to your completely moribund career? This is SO bad it's actually kind of fascinating in a morbid way.

I love a good "stupid comedy". This thing was just pathetic though. I did not laugh 1 single time. I'm really not even sure what part of this movie qualifies it as a comedy of any sort.

The acting was awful to awkward. The camera work was amateurish. There was no plot, no twist, and no end. The soundtrack didn't even make sense with the movie.

Simply put, there really is not one single redeeming quality about it. I am ashamed to say that I wasted my time watching it. No matter what anyone tries to tell you, don't fall into the same trap I did.

AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.

No, I'm not a teen (I'm 40+) No,I don't rent films like these to look at hot chicks having simulated sex. But I admit that I like high school comedies when they are close to good. But this isn't a bad copy of American Pie. It's much worse than that. To see Corey Feldman in such an awful film is sad but maybe not that surprising. To see Brian O'Halloran from my old favorite "Clerks" in this is more depressing. I'm not a fan of censorship but there should be some punishment for making films like this one. I would rate it 0 out of 10 if possible, but I give it 1 star because of the hilarious joke that O'Halloran (born 1969) plays a 45 year old dad while Feldman (born 1971) plays a 25 year old hunk.

This is as bad as movies can get. Camera-work and editing is, like other comments said, home video quality. Actors act like it's their first attempt in front of the camera. Script doesn't make sense. During dialogues, characters constantly say things that don't make sense in the context, things no one would ever say. I'm not sure which parts of this movie were supposed to be comedic. There is a little nudity but it's badly shot and lit that it doesn't look the least bit sexy. Characters are all irritating, inconsistent, and the movie abruptly ends without any of story lines being wrapped up (some just get forgotten along the way). Attempts to imitate other movies of the genre and likewise irritating. And are times that bad for O'Halloran and Feldman that they have to take roles in movies this bad? Don't watch this movie, even if you're an avid fan of teen sex comedies. There's nothing in it for you and you'll just be bored for an hour and a half.