Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
How come I don’t have friends like this? I’m not talking about friends with whom I could engage in a sex orgy with, like the ones in this movie ‘A Good Old Fashioned Orgy’, which would be absolutely horrible and would never happen, just like it could never happen in any kind of reality outside of this movie, but I’m talking about friends from high school who we are still close with to this very day, all living in the same place, all hanging out with each other, theme partying like it’s 1999 every weekend? Oh… that’s right, I moved away, went to college, met a girl, got married and had kids. Just like all of my friends from high school did. Damn.
Eric (Jason Sudekis) likes to party… and not much else really. We see early that he has some kind of job, which is commendable, but he lives for his friends and the party. In fact when we join in, Eric his throwing his annual White Trash Ball, complete with mullets and Tractor races and all kinds of White Trash stuff. I guess. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see any Black people at this party though I bet a lot Black people would love to go to a White Trash Ball. Regardless, the good times at Eric’s villa are about to come to a crashing end as his dad (Don Johnson) is selling the house right from under him. Even though I know Don Johnson is more than old enough to be Jason Sudekis’ father, but something there wasn’t working, which in all honesty is neither here nor there.
About these friends of Eric’s, there his BFF slovenly Mike (Tyler Labine) who I believe is homeless, there’s controlling Alison (Lake Bell) who is some sort of psychologist or something, uptight Adam (Nick Kroll) who is a businessman, repressed Laura (Lindsay Sloane) who is a school teacher, Sue (Michelle Borth) whose main job we think is being insanely hot, and finally we have Doug (Martin Starr) who has a law degree and wants to be a rock star and his lady love Willow (Angela Sarafyan) who does heaven knows what.
So Eric wants to throw the blowout Labor Day party to end all blowout parties and eventually comes to the idea that this party should just be an intimate affair between these good friends in the form of a sex orgy. Sounds like a plan. The majority thinks it’s a stupid plan for a party, because it is, but over the two months or so before labor day, everybody’s on board. There’s a little hiccup in that Eric has met a pretty girl in his
realtor Kelly (Leslie Bibb), but thanks to some sage advice from Mike of all people, the orgy is on track. Of course in the time between the announcement of the orgy and the actual event a lot of theoretically funny stuff does happen, and there is the question whether or not this thing is really going to actually take place, but to my surprise, they do have an orgy. The sweetest, most kind and gentle orgy ever. I guess. I’ve never been to one. I mean I’ve seen plenty of them in other types of movies. But they never looked this one. Roll credits.
So… what we have here with ‘A Good Old Fashioned Orgy’ is a completely amoral, tasteless, adult comedy. Or should I say a completely amoral, tasteless comedy with adults in its cast, since the comedy was mostly juvenile. Could eight friends be so close that they could all pile into a room, have sex with each other and be completely cool with that the next day? Probably not, but then it’s just a movie. Even though all four of the women in this movie are all very attractive, would the guys ignore the other three and just wait for the one who was with Michelle Borth to finish so they could take their turn? Possibly. But it’s just a movie. That statement was inappropriate, but then this movie was inappropriate. Whaddayagonnado?
Yes, the movie made ‘The Land that Time Forgot’ seemed believable by comparison, and we don’t know why Leslie Bibb, as lovely as she is, was actually in this movie, meaning you could load up IMovie and edit out all her scenes, save ten minutes and the movie will still play the same, and we don’t care that its tasteless or amoral, look at the title… all we care is if it made us laugh. It did. Not as much as we would’ve liked, but I did laugh. And it was trying so hard to make us laugh that the effort is commendable.
Without breaking down the jokes, just know that movie does have its moments of comedic gold, a lot of that provided by David Koechner via glorified cameo. Also, a couple of jokes might’ve been too clever for their own good. Say like the scene where these good friends were playing whiffle ball, see what I mean about awesome friends? So they’re playing whiffle ball, Adam is pitching, the women are in the outfield doing stuff that has nothing to do with whiffle ball and Adam says ‘Now I know how Tom Hanks felt’. I’m thinking ‘whatever the hell that meant’, then like two minutes later it dawns on me that this was ‘A League of Their Own’ reference. That was funny… but by then they’d moved on. Again, whaddayagonnado?
‘A Good Old Fashioned Orgy’ certainly isn’t for the prudish or the rigidly logical amongst us, and at times it was tasteless for no other reason than it could be, but it did have it moments.
