CRASH PAD review - Crash and burn

(Reviewed by Melody Werner)

Crash Pad is a 2017 dark "comedy" movie for manlets "directed" by Kevin Trent. This cringey attempt at being a John Hughes flick "written" by Jeremy Catalino stars Domhnall Gleeson, Christina Applegate, Thomas Haden Church, and Nina Dobrev (whyyyyyy?). Released (for some reason) by Destination Films and Vertical Entertainment to middling reviews (for some reason). While I have posted several negative reviews since this new iteration of Popcorn & Fizz Reviews began, I haven't hated a film so much as this one in years. I haven't been so instantaneously inspired to drag such an embarrassment out into the public square and mock it for all to see. Honestly, this spiteful piece of putrid dogshit is so profoundly unfunny, it made me wish I had saved "If a comedy doesn't make you laugh, does that make it a tragedy?" for it.

Crash Pad is an amateurish production, boasting bland locales and Calibri title cards. This is a film that looks to have had its entire budget pumped into snagging Applegate and Dobrev, because I've actually heard of them (albeit one of them because of their... uh, experience in another sphere of film-making altogether). But the actors must have been peckish for a better script, because I think everyone's punching under their weight, aside from Gleeson--who delivers a performance as capital "W" Wacky as they come. At times, I could see him in a genuinely charismatic role, but this film is so repugnant that any and all potential charisma has been taken out back and pumped so full of lead that it has been entirely atomized. The lifeless musical score does not help whatsoever.

Comedy, as we all know, lives and dies based on the sense of humor. And this film has a woeful sense of humor. When it is not busy subjecting you to these nothing characters who lack any sort of humorous personality spouting boomer garbage at you, it shows how much of a dinosaur it is by trading in brazen homophobia, sexism, classism, and ableism. As torture as a bad Seth Rogen style comedy can be, I thought film-makers had learned that this isn't the 2000's anymore and The Ringer level "jokes" about Asperger's are neither edgy or funny. They're just shitty to people who don't deserve to be treated as a punchline. If anything, the brain geniuses who decided this wretched work of monumental hate and idiocy had to be made are the real punchline of this misfire. Edgy humor can be genuinely funny, but it has to come from a place of love and understanding for what is being joked about, because what's funny about cribbing from middle school ass shit like "Lol, go back to your boyfriend"? I refer you to the ContraPoints video, The Darkness, wherein Natalie Wynn/Contra explains in detail how dark comedy can be thoughtful, effective--not to mention actually subversive and offensive to the Puritanical censors. I want controversial humor, but I don't want the same boring trash I've heard my whole life. The only time I cracked a laugh was when I was laughing at Crash Pad--not with it. But this even fails to be so bad, it's good. It has none of the requisite apparent innocence and charm that makes a good bad film. Crash Pad is a film thats existence is worth ridiculing, not one that I am glad exists for the unintended joy that can be wrought of it.

I can forgive a comedy deciding to forego the most thought-provoking narrative. But apropos of no humor, I look to the story. And then what do I find, but something just as fake edgy as the "jokes" Crash Pad consists of? This is a film that presents itself as against the grain and down in the mud, but all it winds up doing is reinforce our exclusive society which stigmatizes things like: having an older woman romantically involved with a younger man, like being a sensitive man who seeks companionship rather than carnal pleasures, like being a woman who yearns for sexual fulfillment. Who is Crash Pad punching at, other than punching down at those who've already been punched down upon?

If there are any bright spots in this film, they aren't remotely enough to turn the tides too far. I guess that Applegate and especially Dobrev look nice (hell, just about any scene with Dobrev is immediately much easier on the eyes, aside from one characteristically terrible dream sequence), but this isn't much of an "eyecandy film" considering how there aren't many attractive guys in it to get queer guys, non-lesbian gals, or NB's hot and bothered. Nor is it a particularly sensual film to begin with. It has a few scenes where I would've played up a funny but sexy angle if I was going to write a script based on this story; however, this shitastrophe defuses every potentially risque moment in favor of the most basic and lazy jokes imaginable. This film could've at least had something possibly interesting to witness with more explicit erotic elements. That said, I am going to be completely honest and say that if it didn't give me more Nina Dobrev to look at, this'd probably round down a score. What? At least it's not entirely useless, and I am nothing if not a true blue hedonist. And you know what? I would've bumped it up by at least 3 if there was a subplot where Dobrev's character is constantly trying to date Applegate's, but Applegate's didn't even notice the flirting. That'd be so fucking adorable and hilarious, and would've made the movie far more likeable (well, if executed how I'd do it, lol).

Crash Pad is by far one of the worst films I have had the displeasure of sitting through from start to finish in recent memory. I came in with low expectations and it still disappointed me. Trite, cliché, relentlessly unfunny, and meanspirited, Crash Pad deserves nothing but to crash and burn in the fires of Hell. Crash Pad gets a 1/10.

Pathetic

Summary:

When your biggest strength is that you hired an actress who is so ungodly cute and just let her be ungodly cute, you know your film is total drek.