When it looks as if their frequent theme parties are about to come to an abrupt end, eight friends decide to throw the theme party to end all theme parties: a good old fashioned Indian orgy.

CRITIQUE

Welcome to the first sitcom to end with eight people having communal sex. For all its naughty language, scatology, consequence-free humping, and Nina Hartley and Kylie Ireland cameos, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (which sat on the shelf for two years and grossed less than three hundred thousand dollars during its theatrical run) is ultimately about as dirty as your average episode of Love, American Style. It’s also about as clever, and it’s possibly even more predictable and obvious.

The movie doesn’t live up to the promise of its title, which I’d more or less expected. It’s also not the least bit funny, which I hadn’t expected. I expected this cast (which includes Jason Sudeikis, Martin Starr, Nick Kroll, Will Forte, Lucy Punch, and Lindsey Sloane) to milk at least a couple laughs out of this material; their failure to do so is a testament to just how bad this material is.

Although reportedly inspired by the elaborate theme parties thrown by co-writer/co-director Peter Huyck, the plot plays more like something he and co-writer/co-director Alex Gregory (this is the first directing effort for Huyck and Gregory; it shows) had left over from their time writing for King of the Hill and The Tracy Morgan Show. No, you wouldn’t expect an episode of a network show to revolve around this sort of plot, but the structure certainly recalls that of your average half-hour comedy.

You can see the conflicts being set up, and you can guess how they’ll be (easily) resolved. Will the woman who keeps breaking up and getting back together with the guy all of her friends hate go back to him or will she finally have the courage to stand up for herself? Will the woman who hasn’t been on a date in almost two years and has lost her self-esteem finally find someone who likes her for who she is? Will the uptight guy whose life revolves his job finally learn to loosen up and stop checking his Blackberry every five minutes? Will the guy who refuses to grow up and enter a committed relationship find someone he really likes? (The answers to those questions are obvious. The only question that requires any sort of thought is why Tyler Labine gets naked and Michelle Borth doesn’t. Given her past work, I assumed she’d take any opportunity to disrobe.)

So it takes more than ninety minutes and a bunch of open-door sex for the movie to wrap up a series of plotlines so lame and old-hat they can usually be wrapped in twenty-two minutes (and without the open-door sex). And all of the open-door sex really doesn’t matter. It’s by no means integral to the plot; the way things turn out, the story could have revolved around a game of Jenga.

All of the stuff with the orgy seems like nothing more than an excuse for Huyck and Gregory to include all of the cheap jokes about dildos and pegging. It’s raunchy for the sake of being raunchy, but it’s raunch without wit, and it’s raunch that lacks the courage of its own convictions. It’s play-acting raunch, the sort of thing you expect from adolescent boys; it’s the product of the sort of mindset that doesn’t care about what goes into a good masturbation joke, instead thinking any joke about wanking is automatically funny. Or that it’s automatically funny to talk about an orgy in front of a priest.

Or that’s it’s automatically funny to have an old guy show up to a redneck-themed party with a cow. Or that male nudity is automatically funny. For guys who’ve worked in comedy for more than a decade, Huyck and Gregory don’t seem to have any idea how to construct a comedic situation or line of dialogue. Or maybe they just don’t care. Whatever the case, it doesn’t make for anything that comes anywhere close to being funny.

Relatively speaking, the only moment in the movie that comes anywhere close to being funny is a bit with David Koechner, who plays an old perv who attends weekly orgies. The characters played by Sudeikis and Labine (this is the same character always played by Labine, the one cast member I didn’t expect anything from) turn to Koechner for some advise, which Koechner gladly supplies while he’s getting ready to, uh, finish his turn in the saddle.

As is usually the case, Koechner gives it his all (I’d wager the incredibly phony beard his character sports was his idea), but aside from flashes of the bare breasts of the actress with whom Koechner is enjoying himself, the scene plays exactly as it did in the movie’s trailer. So anyone who knows anything about the movie has already seen the only bit that doesn’t completely bite.

So all you’re left with is the stuff that does bite. And just how much this stuff bites can be illustrated by another bit of footage from the movie’s trailer. Kroll is worried about measuring up to the other male participants, and Sudeikis attempts to ease his mind by saying that women aren’t interested in size. There’s a quick cut to the female leads, who are wondering which of their male friends has the biggest unit.

First of all, that joke’s so old its driver’s license has been revoked for medical reasons. Second, the bit plays like one of those gags that’s cut together for the trailer but actually comes from two different, unrelated scenes in the movie. The fact that Huyck and Gregory wrote an actual scene that plays out like that speaks volumes about their abilities. It’s good for me, though, as I can cut this review short. I don’t even need to mention all of the montages or the scene in which the friends drunkenly sing along to Biz Markie’s crowing achievement, because you already know all you need to know.

THE VIDEO

The 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer is flat and a little ugly, but that seems to be representative of the original photography. For reasons that remain unclear, this bawdy sex romp was lit and photographed in a way that makes it look more like a zero-budget indie drama. I know the movie was shot on the cheap, but the grubby visuals don’t exactly jibe with the material. But it certainly doesn’t look awful, just odd and uninspired. I did eventually get used to it, even if I never did come to understand it.

THE AUDIO

There’s absolutely nothing special about the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (in English and French varieties), offering pretty much what you’d expect from a cheap comedy. Aside from some very mild music bleed and a bit of ambience in a couple of the party scenes, the mix remains locked in the front channels. Dialogue sounds okay, as does all of that music (used here to compensate for the lack of genuine emotion and humor). English, English SDH, and French subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary by Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck, and Jason Sudeikis is almost as unfunny as the movie itself. I say “almost” because I can’t comment on the parts I slept through.

Ten deleted scenes (16 minutes) offer extended (read: even more unfunny) versions of scenes that made the final cut.

A gag reel (5 minutes) offers a mix of unused improvisations and flubs/crackups (many of which feel staged).

How to Film an Orgy (8 minutes) is a lame making-of featurette.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The sloppy filmmaking I can handle. The complete absence of laughs is another matter.