Intramural

Small-town college student has to choose between ambition and passion.

Iron rule of movie selection: always ignore the hot piece of ass on the cover. A few chuckles from this, but when I checked the time there were still 60 mins to go. Fcuk me.

In one scene a guy in a wheelchair delivers a sarcastic slow hand-clap, but keeps interrupting himself to roll the wheelchair forward - funny idea, but zero reaction from me. Plenty of parody of feel-good sports movies, channelling The Mean Machine with a touch of Ben Stiller. Actors, direction, jokes, editing all good - enough for a laugh-a-minute, but for all that input it just doesn't click.

How does a movie die on screen? I dunno - the mystery of comedy. I guess it comes down to the spirit of the thing, and the tongue-in-ass mockery of macho culture comes across as smug.

There was a hint of the pointlessness of college education, but they didn't go for the political slant.

Ignore the external reviews - this sadly is a fail.

I stuck with it the whole way and like many of the cast already from their other endeavors (primarily SNL). This one simply fails to evolve into anything more than a few chuckles and yuks here and there.

The announcers added some good lines and the lead is likable. The pep/anti-pep talk was also a good joke. Technically speaking, the film is very good. It was shot well, editing and so forth are nicely executed.

My summary is that it is too weak for a five, but I didn't hate it either. You most assuredly should not pay to see this movie. Free...okay, but at the end, I can only give it a 4 of 10.

Caleb Fuller (Jake Lacy) quits Intramural football after his receiver friend gets paralyzed getting kicked in the balls. Four years later, Vicky Albrecht (Kate McKinnon) asks him to marry her publicly at her birthday party after 5 and a half months of dating. He accidentally says yes. He encounters former mate Vinnie and reunites the old team Panthers together again. His nemesis Dick leads the Titans. Caleb falls for Dick's sister Meredith Downs (Nikki Reed).

Comedy is easy to rate and hard to explain. I can't be absolutely sure. This is not outrageous enough. I barely cared about any of the characters and laughed even less. Everybody is trying to shine in a wacky character playoff. None of them are funny or the least likable. Jake Lucy as the straight man is lackluster. This is a comedy troupe B-team trying out their material and it's getting crickets. Despite the female butt shoot on the cover, there isn't any nudity humor. There is nothing overtly awful but it's simply not good. I blame Kickstarter.

The theatrical poster for Balls Out (also known as Intramural and another film that can't maintain consistency of what it should be called on a variety of different film websites) reminds me of the DVD covers of a direct-to-DVD National Lampoon film or a throwaway sex comedy one can find by lazily searching Netflix's streaming selection. Its boisterous display of the backside of a cheerleader in uniform, complete with a football reading the film's title is perplexing because it seems that MGM and Orion Pictures is marketing a totally different film here. After seeing the festival circuit success of a film like They Came Together, a film that was hellbent on calling out the clichés of romantic comedies, did these two immensely successful studios really think a film about parodying sports clichés couldn't succeed?

It's no real bother because the more under-the-radar Balls Out stays, the better. This is one of the many desperately unfunny comedies I've seen this year, almost down there with Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser and Mortdecai in the way these films seem to cloyingly pine for laughs by throwing their main character into any circumstance so long as it's allegedly funny. Balls Out, a film centered around a gaggle of misfit football players in college whom reunite their ragtag, intramural football team years after an injured teammate caused them to disband, is a film that sets itself up to fail right from the get-go. It's a film that tries to emphasize the stupidity, incredulity, and sheer brainlessness of a plethora of underdog sports films, but instead of going a separate way and rising above the clichés, Balls Out finds it funny to simply play by them in a loud and obvious manner. By the end, I had one question for director Andrew Disney and writer Bradley Jackson - what did you accomplish with this particular film? You didn't prove yourself better than the sports films you were lampooning, you just dumbed your film down to their level by positioning this film as the answer to all the clichés and predictabilities of a genre.

Where They Came Together had the chemistry of Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler at its core, constantly emphasizing their quick-witted nature and their plethora of zingers, Balls Out pathetically orchestrates one tired situation after another that involves the group of collegians yelling, screaming, and slamming one another to the ground in an entirely witless fashion. Laughing at the fact these imbeciles take intramural sports so seriously grows grating, especially when the memories of gym class from school-years gone past begin to surface, where all the torment and humiliation came into play.

At its core, however, Balls Out is simply not funny. Like its characters, it tries so hard to make us laugh by persistently nudging us, the audience, positioning itself to be wiser and more humorous than the film it's parodying, when it finds a way to be much lower than those films simply because it fails at its ultimate goal of being a successful comedy. This is also the case of a film that maybe could've made a successful two to three minute skit on Saturday Night Live (apparently this film stars members of comedy groups like that, Derrick Comedy, BriTANicK, and Good Neighbor, although I presume a lot of their talent got lost in translation); it certainly makes a nearly insufferable one-hundred minutes.

Starring: Jake Lacy, Beck Bennett, Jay Pharoah, Nikki Reed, and Kate McKinnon. Directed by: Andrew Disney.

Director Andrew Disney gained many fans back in 2011 with his comedic/mystery film Searching for Sonny. At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, the young director returned with the hilarious and original college film Intramural. Starring Jake Lacy, Nikki Reed, and a slew of current "Saturday Night Live" cast members that include Beck Bennett, Jay Pharoah, and Kate McKinnon, the independent film knows exactly what it is. There's no pretending to be anything more than an uproarious chuckle-fest at the movies.

Intramural tells the story of Caleb (Lacy), a fifth year senior that gathers the courage to return to the intramural games at school following a tragic accident of one of his classmates. As probable marriage, graduate school, and life close in on him, comedic antics engulf the viewer in a non-stop riot.

Written by Bradley Jackson, who's penned previous independent efforts like Lord Montagu, all the jokes utilized in film mostly land. Of the cast, Beck Bennett and Kate McKinnon steal the show in every scene, as they tend to do on "Saturday Night Live." Bennett, playing one of the funniest and sociopathic villains in quite some time, is the best of the cast. His gifts and timing are spot on. The biggest chuckles of the film come from him. McKinnon fires on all cylinders, giving her all as she does every Saturday night. I was under her spell the whole time.

Intramural is the best obscure sports film of its kind since Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Part "Old School" and part "Happy Gilmore," the film takes you completely by surprise by how easy-going and enjoyable the entire film is. Though the film relies heavily on slapstick humor, which works in parts, I would have liked some more of the infectious and quotable dialogue that Jackson created. A scene that includes the line "you got to sh*t on the ceiling" will likely stay with me all year, and perhaps the rest of my life.

It's great to see star Nikki Reed venturing out to new realms of her acting career. Once very promising in 2003′s Thirteen, Reed got hooked into the "Twilight" franchise before marrying (and now divorcing) "American Idol" alum Paul McDonald, the 25-year-old actress has a lot more to deliver the world of cinema. Star Jake Lacy helms the film à la Chris Evans in Not Another Teen Movie. An admiral effort but what's going on around him is much more interesting, and funny. I'm curious to see what the star can do in other vehicles in the future (he'll have a role in Todd Haynes' upcoming Carol).

The other supporting players put some of their best comedic ticks to good use, particularly Nick Kocher, a promising up and comer who may become a household name in years time. The entire ensemble is a terrific treat that will go down as one of the strongest of independent cinema in 2014.

Overall, Intramural is a successful hybrid of young adult comedy. A pure and modern example of slapstick comedy and where it can go, when placed in the right hands. Had me thinking fondly of last year's breakout comedy G.B.F. (currently on Netflix), another happy time at the Tribeca Film Festival.