Rachel Dratch is to Tina Fey, as George Lopez is to Freddie Prinze. The former is the less funny version of the latter. When Tina Fey wrote the screenplay for Mean Girls she created an insightful and apt film taking timely aim at teen culture. In writing Spring Breakdown Rachel Dratch retreads a story so common and overused that even National Lampoon has slowed its pace on the subject: spring break. The well of spring break comedy has run dry. It ran dry years ago. Drunken teens, foam parties and girls gone wild can only serve as the butt of so many jokes. Spring Breakdown hasn’t refreshed the topic – hell, we can’t even say it’s beating a dead horse; the movie is shuffling its feet in the dust of the horse’s skeletal remains.
Three girls graduated from college under the impression that a lack of popularity fades naturally. Gayle O’Brien (Amy Poehler) trains seeing-eye dogs and yet still strikes out with their blind owners (Will Arnett, who is always funny). Judi Joskow (Rachel Dratch) discovers her engagement to William (Seth Meyers) might be a sham when she finds him and the pool boy being slightly too intimate. Meanwhile, Becky St. Germaine (Parker Posey), mourning the recent loss of her cat, has been assigned by her boss Senator Hartmann (Jane Lynch) to watch over her daughter Ashley (Amber Tamblyn) while on Spring Break. Eager to get ahead and prove to the highly aggressive senator that she has “balls”, Becky jumps on the assignment and takes her two friends with because a Spring Break on South Padre Island will give their lives the kick of popularity they always wanted.
The plot then follows a very obvious arc of each girl pursuing a “comedic” goal all the while never betraying to Ashley that they’ve been sent by her mother. Gayle befriends the never-grew-out-of-Spring-Break chaperone Charlene (Missi Pyle) and eventually falls in with a pack of slutty popular girls led by Sophie Monk. Judi meanwhile sets her sights on Todd (Justin Hartley), a stupid though attractive piece of meat, with the delusion of mutual attraction. Becky is left playing the Worcestershire to Ashley’s Mr. Magoo. There’s supposed to be a deep and comedic twist in that Senator Hartmann thinks her Renaissance Fair-loving daughter is a party animal at heart, which is a semi-self-fulfilling prophecy as Ashley decides to “go wild” for Spring Break to win back her tool of a boyfriend (Jonathan Sadowski). Said twist however is nothing new and comes just as the audience is meeting the daughter – besides slapping her into a Renaissance Fair setting and having her boyfriend say time and again that she’s boring isn’t character development, it’s a contrivance of lazy writing. The whole thing ends in a very predictable and woefully unfunny spectacle that leaves the audience wondering why it took 84 minutes to get somewhere that could have been reached in 10.
I can’t say I expected more of Rachel Dratch, and it’s obvious that many of the film’s cameos are owed to her Saturday Night Live ties; but how did Parker Posey get drawn into this mess? The only answer that remains is that director Ryan Shiraki realized he’d written a screenplay devoid of laughter and decided to use the comedic presence of its stars to compensate. Jane Lynch isn’t scrounging for work – was Spring Breakdown a charity case? The parts in this case are greater than the sum.
Spring Breakdown reeks of unfunny. It’s like comedy died and no one thought to bury it, so they just filmed around its corpse as the smell seeped into the celluloid.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Truth: Rachel Dratch is more entertaining in commentary mode than on screen. With that said, I’d almost encourage watching the movie with commentary and never with the actual dialogue. Just a thought. Beyond that, the extras are depressingly dull with just a few deleted scenes and a gag reel which has a few gold nuggets but overall isn’t too rich. Oh, and the kind people at Warners have seen fit to include a digital copy in the package.
Spring Breakdown is available on DVD, Blu-ray, or download at the iTunes Store. Honestly, opt for the second two because there’s nothing about this film which screams for a place on your shelf.
"Spring Breakdown" is on sale June 2, 2009 and is rated R. Comedy. Directed by Ryan Shiraki. Written by Rachel Dratch, Ryan Shiraki. Starring Amber Tamblyn, Amy Poehler, Jane Lynch, Missi Pyle, Parker Posey, Will Arnett, Rachel Dratch, Seth Meyers, Sophie Monk, Jonathan Sadowski.
