DVD Talk > Reviews > Miss March

Miss March

Fox // Unrated // $39.99 // July 28, 2009

Review by Adam Tyner | posted August 3, 2009

R E P L A Y

A D V I C E

Skip It

E - M A I L

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R E V I E W S

Graphical Version

"I think I get it. I was trying to turn my girlfriend into a Playboy bunny, and that's why she had that seizure and I stabbed her in the face a bunch...but if I just realized she was a bunny, then none of those firemen would be trying to kill me."

I know! Hands trembling with anticipation, I tore the shrinkwrap off this Blu-ray disc fully expecting that Miss March would chronicle the further adventures of one of my favorite characters from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and what do I get instead...? A titty comedy.

Yeah,

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that was supposed to be my dazzlingly witty intro, so I'm clearly off to a great start here. Anyway, Miss March stars Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore: two of The Whitest Kids U Know, and...hey! they co-write and direct too, so at the end of the day, it really is all their fault. Anyway, Eugene (Cregger) is all doe-eyed and Disney-animated-blue-canaries-flitting-around-with-little-strips-of-ribbon over Cindi (Raquel Alessi). The two of 'em have been making the rounds at junior highs extolling the virtues of...y'know, virtue, and Eugene really does mean what he's preaching up there, deciding to hold off on the whole insert-tab-B-into-slot-A thing. Cindi isn't quite so meek, though. Yup, she says it's time, and Eugene grudgingly agrees to give it a go on prom night. He's kinda jittery, though, so his wacky best friend Tucker (Moore, donning the standard issue Wacky Best Friend uniform of a Hawaiian shirt) convinces him to guzzle down a few shots of liquid courage.

Oops! Instead of grabbing onto a couple of C-cups and cluing into what his Special Purpose is for, Eugene winds up in a coma for four long years. When he wakes up...? His angel is a centerfold. Before you can say "na na na na na na", Eugene and Tucker are carving a path clean across the country to the Playboy Mansion, and...okay, they haven't really figured out what they're gonna do once they get there, but I'm pretty sure telling Cindi something factors in somewhere along the line. Yeah, so it's another road-trip-to-get-laid-I-guess comedy, complete with an epileptic-fork-stabbed-vengeful girlfriend (Molly Stanton) and a half-battalion of bloodthirsty firefighters, a way-overcompensating rapper MC'ing as Horsedick-dot-mpeg (The Office's Craig Robinson), Eastern bloc lesbians, arson...yeah.

Look, I'm not some stuffy online critic who scowls at anything but subtitled Swedish imports or whatever. I mean, I dug Sex Drive, and I was forcing Eurotrip on pretty much anyone who trotted into my living room for a while there. I might as well have a bright, shiny sticker beaming "Hello, I'm the target demographic; ask me how!" slapped somewhere chest-ish. It's just that Miss March is really bad. Really, really bad. Really, really, really, really, really bad. Like, if I copied and pasted "really" seventeen or eighteen more times, I'd still probably be underselling just how God-awful Miss March really is. Really. There's an art to stupid comedy, and Miss March botches it. One of the first gags in the flick is a ten year old (or whatever) saying, "look at the ass on that thing. Hello!" You're supposed to laugh 'cause a little kid said "turd cutter". Okay. Oh, Tucker keeps saying cock and balls on the phone, and there's a running gag where Eugene squirts out a couple barrel drums of diarrhea whenever he's stressed. It's like those hack comics in the '80s who'd say "spork", and that was supposed to pass for a punchline...no setup, no payoff, just referencing "spork" was supposed to make you snicker. I never really got into what little I'd caught of The Whitest Kids U Know's sketch comedy on cable, but I kinda got the impression that they're more adventurous than "tee-hee! The fat guy said 'poop'!" or a lazy gross-out gag like ringing out a shit-sopping rag.

The funniest

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thing early on is an axed "retard" joke that's so clumsily looped out that it looks less like Cindi's extolling the virtues of abstinence and more like she's bragging that Gamera is a friend to all children. I'll admit that I laughed a couple of times, tho'. There's a gag with a bikini shirt, and for some stupid reason, I'm apparently an easy mark for that sort of thing. Playmate of the Year-slash-infomercial starlet Sara Underwood pops up for a running joke with a Yorkshire Terrier, and damned if that didn't keep me cackling pretty much the whole time, from Tucker misunderstanding exactly how she nursed that poor Yorkie back to health to ummm...getting rid of the evidence after trying to pour some booze down his wittle throat. Lockpicking cunnilingus is kind of brilliant too, but that's...pretty much it, though.

For a sex comedy, there's hardly any...what's the word I'm fumbling around for here...oh! Sex. 'Snot much nudity either, even in this unrated version. Even though Raquel Alessi is supposed to star as a Playmate, she shows more skin on the cover art than she does in the actual movie. A lot of the women who do lose their tops aren't all that appealing: most of 'em are so cartoonishly overinflated that they look like the pumped-up dragons in "Dig Dug" and, by and large, they drove right past Pretty seven or eight exits back.

Miss March is starring, co-written by, and directed by a couple of kids off a cable sketch comedy show, and...yeah, that's pretty much what it feels like: a long, dumb, room temperature sketch. It chucks an armful of routine gross-out gags at a paint-by-numbers plot, but nothing ever really connects. I mean, Miss March is a sex comedy with hardly any sex and pretty much no comedy, and it's in the running as the single worst flick I've suffered through so far this year (and I watched Strange Wilderness too!). Nah, grab a copy of the way-better-pinky-swear Sex Drive instead.

Oh, and thanks to ~~zinc oxide~~seamless branching, this Blu-ray disc belts out both the R-rated cut of Miss March that made the rounds theatrically along with an unrated version. So, what's different...? More of Tucker striking out at the mansion. More boobs in the grotto. More lesbians. More poop. I guess a different version of the "Suck My Dick While I Fuck That Ass" music video shoot. I don't know why you'd grab a copy of Miss March and opt for a neutered cut, but...hey! The theatrical version's here if you want it anyway.

Video

Miss March is saddled with a low-rent, shot-on-video look, but for what it is, this Blu-ray disc looks pretty solid. The digital photography sports a silky smooth texture, and it's lugging around a vivid, candy-colored palette. Its more brightly-lit shots are ridiculously sharp with a nice three-dimensional pop, but contrast flattens out and the image can look quite a bit softer when the lights are dialed down. A few scattered wider shots strike me as kinda soft and murky as well. Even with a seasoned D.P. behind the camera, Miss March really just looks like something hammered out for basic cable, and there's nothing all that cinematic about it.

A few extra scanlines lightly letterbox Miss March to its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and the video on this dual-layer Blu-ray disc has been encoded with AVC.

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Audio

Miss March is packing a 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, but...yeah, swooping dynamics, crystalline highs, a startlingly immersive sound design...? Not so much. The mix is all kinda muddled together, the surround channels are kept chittering throughout but still come across as pretty much an afterthought, and dialogue sounds sort of flat throughout. The thundering hip-hop kinda/sorta rattles the room, but still, it's not exactly something you'd grab off the shelf to show off your home theater rig. Miss March sounds less like a movie and more like...well, a low-budget show on cable like The Whitest Kids U Know, so don't brace yourself for any ecstatic toe-curling or anything.

This Blu-ray disc also serves up a Dolby Digital 5.1 dub in French along with subtitles in English (SDH), Spanish, and Portuguese.

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Extras

Viral Videos (14 min.; SD): Zach 'n Trevor hammer out all the Foley work for Miss March but can't really nail the right sound for a blowjob...the few of the other Whitest Kids U Know swoop in to audition for slots in the flick...there's a casting hiccup for lesbians and gangsta-with-an-'A' rappers...it kinda works better in the context of a sketch like this, really.
Down and Dirty with Horsedick.mpeg (2 min.; SD): A really quick Behind the Music riff on the set of "Suck My Dick While I Fuck That Ass" is belted out in censored and uncensored versions.
Digital Copy: Yeah, you know this whole routine by now. If you're keeping track at home, though, Miss March's digital copy is compatible with both iTunes and Windows Media-powered devices.

Horsedick.mpeg wants to know where the white women at?

The Final Word

Grab the next-to-last sketch on any random episode of Saturday Night Live, drag it out for a pretty much laughless hour and a half, sprinkle in some poop jokes and a few bolted-on Frankentitties, and you're stuck staring at Miss March. Skip It.

Why Not? A Few More Screengrabs