Mardi Gras: Spring Break

"Mardi Gras" makes the audacious choice of putting its worst scene at the beginning: you know how sex comedies have to start with a big set piece, one huge laugh that pulls you in and never lets you go? Well, "Mardi Gras" starts with an elderly couple we'll never see again remembering their first Mardi Gras, which very predictably turns into an overly explicit conversation about sex. I've seen and heard some horrid things in this subgenre, but an elderly woman literally just describing how her husband ejaculated on her breasts, without an actual joke in sight? Not how you lure me in. It's only like a thirty- second vignette, but it easily feels like thirty minutes. Who writes this and honestly thinks he's struck gold? Oh, we'll get two elderly actors and write some sex-related words on a napkin, maybe it'll be funny by accident. It won't.

I'm glad to say that's the only cringe-inducing scene in the movie, it doesn't have laugh-out-loud moments but I got through it fairly well. "Mardi Gras" is hurt though by the fact that its plot just hobbles along. It starts of with two losers who can't get a girlfriend (not saying "boobs" in every sentence could help), then they turn on the TV and it's a report on Mardi Gras in New Orleans. So uh...let's go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans! If that's all the effort you're going to do to set this up, why not just start the movie at Mardi Gras? The lack of stakes also makes it difficult to connect: Bret Harrison was a believable nerd in "Grounded For Life", but even there he got the girl fairly quickly. We're honestly supposed to buy him as a desperate, 25-year-old virgin? Would have made a lot more sense to reserve that subplot for the obese friend who's desperately trying to be Jonah Hill. The movie quickly deteriorates into a collection of barely related sketches, which are occasionally good for a chuckle but never add anything to the meager story.

There is a saving grace though: Nicholas D'Agosto and Arielle Kebbel have a very natural style in their acting, and though their story is highly predictable it didn't really bother me. They both have likable characters, which is kind of a rarity in "American Pie" rip- offs. Hell, most of them don't even have characters. They really have great chemistry, I wish the movie didn't waste that much time in Carmen Electra's (does she ever refuse a role?) hotel room or showing not Jonah Hill naked. Come on not Jonah Hill, I'm trying to have popcorn here. "Mardi Gras" isn't a great movie, but it's not a completely brainless sex comedy either.

I've rated it a 5 out of 10 because it's average. On the whole it wasn't very entertaining but it did have it's comedic moment's. It was a bit confusing, in the sense that it didn't 'flow' well, a bit choppy. Some of the actors/actresses were good but the majority of them were very much below average, maybe with the right actors and a few alterations within the script it might have the potential to rate a 7-8/10 - we'll have to just wait and see whether a sequel is made and whether or not it is interesting enough to watch.

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Chrisie Wood-Hopps

OK the only reason I write this review is because of the Rating here on this site. Normally I find the ratings on IMDb very reliable. Most of the time it is a good tool to differentiate good movies from crappy ones and the ratings correlate with my own taste in general. So i tend so sometimes watch movies which got a good rating on IMDb although they wouldn't appeal to me otherwise. And very often I had a pleasant surprise and found really good flicks that I wouldn't even have noticed otherwise. Not in this case. At the time I'm writing this the movie has a rating of 8.1 which is already very very good if you consider that classics like Gone with the wind or Good Will Hunting are rated equally high. So I decided to watch it solely because of the good rating and was extremely disappointed to have wasted about 90 minutes on this piece of garbage. It is a mediocre movie at the very best and I wouldn't even go that far. I have no idea how such a flick can get an 8.1. Maybe all the actors and their their entire families gave it a 10. I don't know and I don't care. My only motivation to deal with this movie a little longer than the 90 minutes it lasted is to prevent others from making the same mistake I did. So here is my review that says everything there is to say about this flick: THIS IS NOT A GOOD MOVIE. STORY AND ACTING ARE WAY BELOW AVERAGE. ITS NOT FUNNY OR VERY ENTERTAINING AND THE RATING OF 8.1 IS COMPLETELY UNDESERVED!

Mardi Gras: Spring Break (2011) is a movie I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a group of friends at Penn State that decide to venture off together one last time for Spring Break in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Fortunate for them they keep running into Carmen Electra, unfortunate for them nothing they planned for New Orleans goes as planned...

This movie is directed by Phil Dornfeld (Guilty Hearts) and stars Nicholas D'Agosto (Gotham), Josh Gad (Frozen), Regina Hall (Girls Trip), Carmen Electra (Scary Movie), Danneel Ackles (Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay) and Arielle Kebbel (The Grudge 2).

The storyline for this picture has an American Pie/newer National Lampoons feel to it. The comedic content actually has a few good moments and Gad is pretty funny throughout. The initial nude party invite scene, the fan/poop combo sequence and the wet t-shirt contest were pretty good...but the float ending was super cheesy and painful to watch unfold.

Overall this does have a few scenes that will give you a chuckle but not enough to make it worth watching. I would score this a 3.5/10 and recommend skipping it.

Mike Morgan (Nicholas D'Agosto) is a college guy from the northeast. His girlfriend Erica (Danneel Ackles) doesn't like his idiot friends Bump (Josh Gad) and Scottie Smith (Bret Harrison) whom he's known since high school. She's distraught after her grandfather's death. His friends convince him on a road trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. They are shocked to see Erica partying and flashing her boobs. The boys run into Carmen Electra. Mike meets Lucy Mills (Arielle Kebbel) and Bump meets local Ann Marie (Regina Hall).

This type of broad college sex comedies are getting old. Josh Gad is throwing everything at this and it feels very common. Almost everything seems flat in this one. The poop joke is so common that I actually got bored. It's not shocking anymore. The only truly fun scene for me is the boys competing against the teams of girls in the wet T-shirts. It allows the three guys to play off each other better in something a little different. Too bad, it's only one scene in a whole movie of been-there and done-that sex-romp.