Background: The lure of Hollywood and all the dreams it creates a tremendously appealing fantasy that so many people adhere to. They think they can move to Southern California and become a movie of television star overnight if they just get the right break. This dynamic is similar to many of our dreams built on ignorance, the idea that we are able to transcend the dreams of others if we just play our cards right rather than work hard for something and it will be given to us. Needless to say, most actors make well below poverty wages, serving as chumps to a great many predators that would take advantage of these dreams and hopes, the term "Casting Couch" well known even to those that make it big and downplay their participation in having to sleep their way to the top in many cases. That was the basis for a very lame comedy from the folks at National Lampoon with their latest terribly title going straight to DVD; Cattle Call.

Movie: Cattle Call stars Thomas Ian Nicholas as Richie Rey, a loser so unlucky at love that even the online dating services yield him no dates. While lamenting his fate to his best friend, sleaze ball Sherman Oaks (Andrew Katos), they come up with the idea of preying on stupid women desperate for success in the entertainment field by using a fake casting call to audition ladies for roles in a movie. In order to make the scam believable, they convince their friend Glenn (Dietrich Bader in perhaps his worst role ever) to help them rent a place, set it up to look like it is a legitimate operation, and scam the ladies. The idea is that the ladies routinely use those around them to get parts so they are somehow morally alleviated from conducting themselves in a responsible fashion; a core idea held in many movies released by National Lampoon (who actually just buy movies that fit their image these days and then promote them as their own).

Their casting call finds scores of ladies that want to be in a movie, some of them more willing to engage in naughty behavior than others, leading the guys to come to terms with their own personalities. Richie is the likable loser that grows increasingly distraught with the situation, especially as he falls for Marina Del (Jenny Mollen); one of the gals with no experience that has high hopes for a better career. She falls for him too and they are perfect for one another but the relationship is built on lies and has little chance of succeeding. Sherman is pretty much open to screwing anything with a heartbeat and Glenn is so painfully anti-social that you'd think he fell from outer space (we're talking Bader being so wooden that he could have taken a fistful of Quaaludes before production each day). As with any such comedy, the men reap the rewards until they are discovered as frauds, the women scheming to get back at them (Nicole Eggert as Laurel and Chelsea Handler as Nikita) in what amounted to the best moment of the movie in the motel room set up.

The moral quandaries tossed aside, Richie saves the day of his friends and gets the girl but it is so conveniently done (and after the worst court room scene ever to grace a direct to video offering, we're talking Troma-bad) that I had to openly wonder how low some of these people could sink. I know Eggert is making crap flicks these days (Lightspeed anyone?), Bader doing voice over work in cartoons for the most part, and the others completely off the radar but still; is the point of the movie also to suggest the semi-famous will do anything to extend their fifteen minutes? I'd go into more detail but you really won't care and any humor is purely accidental (if not laughing at the people for being in the movie more than the jokes). This seems to be what National Lampoon has come to these days, a parody of its former glory in need of someone taking the reigns and turning the company around. If you want a painfully weak comedy with almost no nudity, violence, or anything else the redneck crowd seems to want, go ahead but if you are still holding onto a few brain cells, just walk away and Skip It.

Picture: Cattle Call was shot on 35mm film with an anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 as shot by director/writer Martin Guigui. There was a lot of grain and some of the colors looked tinted red in color, the low budget shining through the entire production. There were some compression artifacts and moiré observed too, the bitrate often hovering in the mid 5 Mbps area but bouncing around plenty too. The editing and composition of the scenes looked more in line with a quickly shot television episode to some offbeat cable production or home movie. Major portions of the movie were presented as if shot on a home camera too, particularly the audition sequences with the onscreen graphics mimicking a home camera. The transfer itself was average at best but there was plenty of room on the DVD given the lack of extras so this should not have been the case.

Sound: The audio was offered up with a choice of a 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround English using a 448 Kbps bitrate or a 2.0 Dolby Digital English with a 192 Kbps bitrate. There was so little difference between the two presentations that I wondered if any expense was wasted on the second track. There was virtually no separation between the channels, the rear speakers were not active at all that I could notice, and the bass was greatly limited. The vocals were clear enough, typically sounding added in during post production, and the score was generic to a fault for those who care. There were also subtitles in English or Spanish but I didn't notice any substantial departure in the translations.

Extras: There were some trailers only.

Final Thoughts: Cattle Call was a weak effort by National Lampoon about a trio of losers using a casting call for a movie called Perfect For Me that scammed ladies into dates. This was much like the premise behind the long running porno Jack's Playground (which in turn borrowed it from other sources) but without the humor of the adult series and far less nudity. For a chump movie like this to succeed, it has to have humor, lots of nudity, and some decent cast to work with but the fourth tier nature of the cast aside, I found Cattle Call to be a new low in the company's descent to the bottom of the barrel.