Having recently enjoyed Incoming, a teen comedy made with the kind of intelligence and attitude needed to make something that is both hilarious and fairly unproblematic, I made a bad decision. I decided to scour my viewing options online and find something that might deliver some laughs without any consideration for the more progressive attitudes many of us try to prioritise nowadays. If you're wanting a teen comedy with bad gags and lots of gratuitous nudity then The Asylum, that production company best known for their mockbusters and creature features, has you covered.
The plot is simple. An all-male campus frat house is forced to start sharing their accommodation with a number of young women. Nobody wants the situation to stay that way though, which leads to a battle of the sexes, with the victor hoping to return the house to a unisex state.
I've not seen any other films from director Jacob Coooney, who also co-wrote this puerile screenplay with Brandon Trenz, and I don't think I'll be rushing to check out anything else he decides to do. Alpha House is pretty dire, although those who somehow can't figure out how to see nudity on the internet may be easily pleased by the many moments designed to get young women naked. There aren't any characters worth rooting for though, none of the alleged jokes are even slightly amusing, and the slim plot is almost insultingly dumb.
I don't even want to name any of the men who starred in this thing. They have already been rewarded enough by being in a film that allows them to live out a number of teen fantasy scenarios. It's the women who deserve any praise, and I'll say that at least Heather Paige Cohn, Sam Aotaki, Audrey Ellis Fox, and Mindy Robinson all had more screen presence than any of their male co-stars. That's partially to do with their attractiveness, but it's just as much to do with them being able to do more than snigger and act as over-stimulated as a 17th-century monk glimpsing a woman's bare ankle.
There will be an audience for this, but I would encourage even the target demographic to seek out something better. There are comedies out there that are much funnier. There are titillating movies that have much better titillation. If you want something smarter and more in line with modern sensibilities then I can point you towards a few different options (although this was made just over ten years ago, it feels as if it was made back in the early 1990s . . . and I don't mean that in a good way). And if you want something decidedly non-modern then please feel free to go further back in film history to the likes of National Lampoon's Animal House, Screwballs, or even Porky's. At least they all feel like films made by people who did more than the bare minimum required to string together the set-pieces and wardrobe malfunctions.
2/10
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