We at Chucklehound are pleased to announce the first in our demos of our patent-pending, excrutiatingly scientific viewer focus groups, meant to provide movie studios with an exact prediction of how the film will fare. The method is surprisingly simple: find a small viewing sample that perfectly meet the target audience requirements for a given film, then extrapolate their enthusiasm for the film to the population at large based on the estimated percentage of the American population that also matched the target demographic. Simple.
So, without further ado, let's begin.
The sample audience for this film consists of two subjects, Subject A and Subject B. Both subjects fall in the upper end of the highly desirable 13-25 year old demographic bracket. Both have shown an apparently unending willingness to see teen films of all types, from teen angst comedies (She's All That, Drive Me Crazy) to teen horror (The Rage: Carrie 2, Halloween: H20) and, more importantly, claim to actually like these films.
Both subjects were devout viewers of Freaks and Geeks so are increasingly more likely to enjoy a film featuring James Franco than would the majority of the American public. Further, Subject A harbors a lingering positive attitude towards Shawnee Smith (based more on her work in Who's Harry Crumb? than her work in recent bad sitcoms like Becker), and, while Shawnee isn't actually in this film, Marla Sokoloff is indistinguishable to the naked eye and should play upon these positive feelings. Subject B was a regular watcher of Doogie Howser, MD, so presumably will respond well to the Neil Patrick Harris-esque acting style of this film's leading man, Shane West.
Fabulous. We have clearly identified and acquired the correct targest audience. Let's listen in to a few choice comments from their viewing of the film.
Subject A: If you're already committed to having a giant penis in your film, why not have nudity?
Subject B: How did this get made?
Subject A: This is really bad.
Subject B: No, this is painfully bad.
Subject A: I laughed a few times. Well, I suppose I was laughing at the movie, not really with it...
So, multiplying the enthusiasm shown (1 on a scale of 100) by the size of the demographic group, we can conclusively predict that this film will make somewhere between eight and nine million dollars domestically.
Maybe we should have run this piece a year ago....
Rating: D- (Somewhere between "really" and "painfully" bad)
Reviewed by Padgett Arango