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Hangover with med students





21 and Over (15)
Running time 93 minutes
Rating:**
One of the great traditions of the human race, going back to the Greeks and beyond, is the ability of young men to pour vast amounts of intoxicating drink down their necks, behave very badly and then, with a skip and a jump, become responsible adults overnight.
This is the basic plot of 21 & Over (which is going to be a pub quiz question very soon – ‘Name a recent film with an ampersand in the title?’)
Many seeing this film will come out of the cinema with a strange feeling of déjà vu, easy to explain since the writers and directors, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, have previous experience in this area (remember The Hangover Parts 1, 2 and, coming soon, 3).
Like those films, there is a straight guy (Casey played by Skylar Astin); an innocent victim, Jeff Chang, played by Justin Chon; and a psychopathic “friend”, who gets them into deep ordure at every turn – in this case Miller, played by Miles Teller.
The set-up is that Jeff Chang is a brilliant but innocent kid, just about to become a medical student and then a doctor, like generations of his hard-working Chinese family before him.
Casey is a nice guy, about to go into the world of business. Miller is a slacker, who wants to go to evil music fests, drink lots, take deeply inadvisable substances and go with deeply unsuitable women.
Miller persuades his two old friends to go out for a last drink on Jeff Chang’s 21st birthday – the night before his entrance interview for med school.
Much drink is consumed, minds become clouded, they all get lost and fall into bad company, which means Jeff Chang ends up naked but with a teddy bear Super-glued to a certain sensitive part of his anatomy which may well have a medical name, but is described in the film in more commonplace terms.
There is a lot of chasing about, the inappropriate use of socks, and more bad language than you could ever deal with happily.
In other words, it’s a standard ‘rite-of-passage’ American college film with plenty of comedy situations, some nice dialogue and all the usual tricks of the sub-genre’s trade.
Strangely enough, in places, it is also quite funny, even though the ending is deeply contrived and hugely sentimental.
I think this is a film to appeal to people aged 21 and under, (older if they haven’t matured yet) and who have imbibed before going to the cinema. That way they may not see some of the faultlines in the story and instead laugh without really knowing why. Still, they will have a good evening – if they can remember it.



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