Review

Boobs. Are they what make the world go ‘round? No. I’m pretty sure that gravity does and gravity is, in many ways, the natural enemy of boobage. Nevertheless, boobs are what cause non-Spanish-speakers to watch Telemundo and Univision (after "Sabado Gigante", of course). The promise of nudity, or even the promise of the possibility of nudity, is often enough to tempt twelve-year-old boys the world over to watch anything with an ‘R’ rating. But sometimes the viewer requires connective threads linking instances of toplessness together. These threads should be frayed and preferably denim but their importance is hard to overstate, as watching disconnected Nude on the Moon-style scenes of static nudity turns out to be pretty boring. So despite boasting “Hall of Fame Nudity”, which unfortunately leads one to think of Mike Ditka and Deacon Jones naked more than anything else, one needs to judge Screwballs at least as a vehicle through which arbitrary images of hootery are made coherent.

Screwballs presents itself as a teen sex comedy in the mode of Porky’s or Dingleberries and attempts to satisfy the conventions of that genre within the first couple minutes. The film plays on the shocking resemblance between a giant hot dog and a dick, so that’s cool, before segueing into scenes of 30s-ish high schoolers celebrating the sweetness of cleavage via phony “breast exams” and trips into the girls’ locker room. These celebrations are frowned upon by the administration and we meet our group of ostensible protagonists, four dudes who weirdly look just like The Undertones plus an overweight chronic masturbator, in detention. Welcome to Sucky Town, USA, guys! Except it’s Canada, so detention is probably a lot more relaxed. The fellows are beguiled by a young lady named Purity Busch and get tons more detentions. Apparently Ms. Busch, as her name implies, is a great botanist OR SOMETHING HILARIOUS LIKE THAT so Jerkovski and co. hatch the plot that will drive the rest of the picture: to peek at Purity’s heretofore-unseen breasts before Homecoming. Cue slide-whistle!

Plot-wise, the stakes in this movie are lower than those in a mumblecore movie. I also really want to see a mumblecore teen sex comedy. Maybe Andrew Bujalski and one of the dudes from Black Dice will spend the summer trying to get in Kristen Schaal’s pants while filling out tedious grant applications. So the bulk of Screwballs is comprised of schemes the boys undertake to see this one lady’s chest. Most of the stuff they pull is pretty creepy and you kind of wish they just stayed in detention and clapped the erasers or something. So to speak? True, Purity is pretty mean, and also super hot (the woman who played her also played “Sexy Neighbor” on "Breaking Bad"! Can you say ‘yowza’?), but the lengths the ‘Balls go to sexually harass this insecure young woman are more sad-sleazy than funny-sleazy. These dudes just seem like total dicks most of the time. It’s not really much a surprise that Purity isn’t into them and their attempts at revenge are both excessive and uninteresting. Screwballs just doesn’t try that hard. Plus, there weren’t even that many boobs in it. It fulfills the basic requirements of the genre (the rich guy wears an ascot, everyone jumps into the pool, the principal hates yo-yos) but little else. There is a cool scene where the nerd somehow gets a bowling ball stuck on his penis and then uses the force of premature ejaculation to dislodge it. The scenario is actually funny and it’s probably how MacGyver would’ve solved the problem; but underscoring this scene’s effectiveness is the fact that it’s one of the few instances in which the ‘Balls are on the receiving end of someone’s sick joke. Screwballs isn’t the worst thing on Earth, but let’s just say it’s no Dingleberries.

 -- Skitch Winchester

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