Playroom review by The Grim Ringler

Playroom

I hate to say it but some movies shouldn’t be made. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a huge proponent of indie films, and of young directors getting their shot but, seriously, it really bums me out when some movies get made. I know some pretty fantastic filmmakers who can’t get their films picked up yet, well, films like Playroom get made. This just seems like a case where someone greenlit a film that really didn’t have much to say that hasn’t been said before, and what it said, well, it sorta mumbled.

Guys will be guys, at least that’s how it is with the men of Playroom. A close group of men who have been together since high school reunite on a group trip to catch up, leaving their families and lives behind for a weekend of debauchery. It seem at first as if no time has passed since the friends were all together last, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing. The distance between them all is even wider than before, and it seems that the only way to hide all of these issues between them is through drugs, alcohol and sex. Ah, but with the sex it’s still the same two guys getting all the girls, something the other friends don’t find all that great, as it turns out. So it is that two of the friends disappear with a couple of random club tramps and the rest of the posse wanders back to their hotel rooms to wallow in their cocaine and booze. Flash forward to some pornstar sex for the two friends that hooked up and they feel pretty satisfied with themselves, well, until they wake up handcuffed to the beds. It seems that the girls they hooked up with weren’t quite the simple tramps they had thought. It turns out they were working for a man who fancies himself a porn director and who has made these two knuckleheads his latest project. He insists he will free them, and not mail the porn video they just made to their wives, only if they do as he says. Well, naturally these two tough guys refuse to do as they’re told and well, they end up in very uncomfortable positions and will soon regret their choices. Meanwhile, their friends begin missing the fellas and start to wonder what became of them. After some digging, the friends get a hot tip as to where the guys might be. Unfortunately, to save their friends, these men must enter a world that may make them sacrifice everything, and in the end, it may not be worth it.

Man, I mean, I respect that this is an early film for some of these people. I appreciate the time it takes to make a film, but DAMN this movie is bad. It takes the most obvious pieces of other films, throws in some nearly hardcore sex scenes and the mailed in the rest. This movie is a mess. The film begins with the actors, none of who look to be younger than thirty, as teenagers having a party. It was so strange and surreal, and just damn lazy. Did we NEED to see these guys as bone head kids to appreciate that they never grew up or changed? What this film is, is a cheap cash-in on the harder edged horror films that have come out in the past few years and that’s pretty much it. There’s nothing to learn here, nothing much to see, and in the end you just want all the characters to die what with their whiney mid-life crises. The film looks a shade off of a cheap porno and only the over-acting can beat it for top billing in this bad-fest. And I feel crummy being so hard on the film but it deserves it. It’s not that it’s bereft of talent, as that happens, you do what you can with what you have, but it’s that it’s so devoid of ideas. There’s not anything new here. Nothing. The best part of the entire film is the sex scene, which is so close to porn that if you squint, you’ll think you’ve found a naughty website.

Playroom for all it’s bluster and boil, is simply a boring film. There isn’t much to recommend here save for a very strange, very dry film that tries very hard to shock the viewer but does little more than remind the audience of other, much better films. The DVD I was sent to review was devoid of extras but maybe that’s a blessing in disguise. I can recommend it only for the curious and the mediocre.


2 out of 10 Jackasses

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