Miss March (2009)
Directed by Trevor Moore, Zach Cregger
Written by Trevor Moore, Zach Cregger
Starring Trevor Moore, Zach Cregger, Craig Robinson
Release Date March 13th, 2009
Published March 13th, 2009
The guys behind IFC's The Whitest Kids You Know are a relatively funny troupe in the sketch comedy setting. Given a large scale film production and asked to deliver a cohesive coherent feature film, that funny becomes truly something relative.
Miss March stars Zach Cregger as Eugene, a High Schooler who advocates for abstinence. With his girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) he delivers disturbing talks to small children about sexually transmitted diseases. Eugene had hoped that he and Cindi could wait till they were married before they fell into bed but with prom approaching, Cindi wants to have sex.
Eugene eventually agrees but on the night in question, at a post-prom party, he is absolutely terrified. With Cindi waiting in a bedroom upstairs, Eugene attempts some liquid courage with the help of his long time horndog pal Tucker (Trevor Moore). In fact, Eugene imbibes so much liquid courage that he ends up dropping himself down some stairs and into a coma.
4 years later Eugene wakes up with a bat to the face. It's Tucker who had to try something to wake his best friend. This, especially important because Eugene's gal Cindi is all grown up and posing in Playboy. With this knowledge, Tucker busts Eugene out of the hospital and heads for the Playboy mansion.
Tucker also has an ulterior motive. A fight with his girlfriend Candace (Molly Stanton) has him the target of her angry brother and his brotherhood of crazy firefighters who end up chasing Tucker and Eugene all the way across the country. Also joining the chase is Tucker's pal, a rapper played by The Office star Craig Robinson.
Robinson's rapper has a name that is, I am quite sure, meant to be hilariously funny. I won't repeat it here. I will say that I don't get it. There are non-sequiturs and then there is outright absurdity, I am not sure where this rapper's name falls on that bizarre continuum.
Bizarre is a good way of describing Miss March. It has a plot with a simple propellant. A guy wakes from a 4 year coma to find his girl has posed for Playboy. Simple, straightforward, not unlike the J. Geils classic Centerfold, aside from the coma part.
What writer-directors Cregger and Moore do with this premise is overload it with lowbrow humor and non-starter absurdity that never seems to land within miles of a punchline. Did I laugh? Yes. Trevor Moore has one of those rubbery faces and odd vocal manners that make for easy laughs. Unfortunately, the laughs are too few and far between.
One funny sequence in the movie that I can recall has Cregger repeatedly slapped by a playboy security guard. The guard is played by Davon McDonald who excels in small roles such as this. He was lovable as Dwayne the bartender in Forgetting Sarah Marshall last year. His repeated reasoning for slapping Eugene is the one moment where Miss March earns a few significant laughs.
But, as I said, the laughs here are too few and far between. Miss March is basically a dull witted sex romp/road movie with little invention beyond the simple premise and its series of unfunny body function jokes. It's not terribly offensive really, more of a forgettable waste of time.
