Customer Reviews

Hooking Up

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is far worse than the American Pie movies. It's not funny, has very poor acting (which I expected). Don't waste you money. I'm not sure why this is unrated, as there is almost no nudity in the film. Where did the makers of H.O.T.S. and Bikini Carwash go?

I bought 400 DVD's for 50 cents each when our local rental store went out of business. In that group there were some truly awful movies, but "Hooking Up" and "Confess" (2005) were by far the worst of the bunch (no contest). In fairness "Hooking Up" is slightly better than "Confess"; but only because it looks like the cast and crew are having fun.

It occurred to me during the painful viewing process that the whole project must be one huge inside joke. The three featured actresses (a term I use loosely in this case) have minimal physical appeal. Given the target audience, it seems inconceivable that such casting choices were unintentional. Perhaps the producers just wanted to get a laugh thinking about the disappointment of anyone who rented this thing for its promised exploitation potential, only to end up with a long episode of "The Animal Planet".

The main reservation I have about this theory is that the DVD has a bunch of features: behind-the-scenes, interviews, deleted scenes, outtakes, etc. In all of this stuff I did not detect the remotest sign of the presence of any intelligent life forms associated with the project. I've worked with more professional crews doing stuff for local 48-hour film festivals. So the staggering lameness of the whole production could have been quite by accident.

But without hesitation one of the most tasteless attempts at meaningful teen/twentysomething entertainment this year. The casting and extras add a bit of glimmer to this comedy and as a whole this can give prospective filmmakers an idea of how to make a low-budget hormone flick.

The story follows a group of teens as they navigate their libidos through varying degrees of fulfillment (solo, couples and multiples). The big three cover art names include Corey Feldman, O'Halloran (Dante from the Clerks films) and Pinchot (I remember him most as Serge from Beverly Hills Cop I & III); The latter two playing subdued roles of their older selves, while Feldman gets significant screen time berating, beating and nailing every girl in the movie. Some of the dialogue will give the younger audiences a laugh or two, especially with the depth of honesty these guys indulge with each other - but overall the sequences are long and tedious.

The special features are extensive and include:
* 30 minute making-of that covers a solid amount of background material as told through an unnarrated series of clips and takes/second person cuts. Also has an anatomy of a scene - For as much as this film centers on a certain task bestowed upon men by one girl in this film, they actually show a decent clip on how they got it made.
* Approx. 30 minutes of deleted scenes, extended scenes, outtakes, bloopers and "pranks" (the main prank was lame, guess was a had-to-be-there moment).
* Large Pepperoni Pizza, a clip on the actual footage and background on the porn-within-a-film material.

Not sure (even after watching the supplements) if this was meant to be a help in making teens rethink certain decisions regarding the themes here, or if this was just a shallow attempt at enacting all the soft core scenes.

A glorified Corey Feldman playing a 25 year old coke snorter screwing 15 and 16 year old high schoolers. Cory is one year younger than me in real life, He seriously has issues signing up to do this movie. Im all for movies like american pie, fast times even porky's but geeez this is way over the line. Very disappointed with the movie, cory and netflix for pushing it out there.

"Hooking Up" was much better than I expected it to be. After reading a slew of negative comments on the movie, I was expecting it to be horrendous, but I found it overall to be quite entertaining and quirky. It's certainly flawed (would have liked a more focused plot and more of a denouement), but had some funny dialogue and some memorable scenes. It also brought up some interesting teenage social trends that have recently started to get some publicity (the hooking up culture, the ridiculous justifications some girls are using to claim to remain virgins, rainbow parties, unhealthy and obsessive relationships, etc.) Bronson Pinchot excelled in his cameo as a high school teacher constantly avoiding being seduced by his student (add this to his list of great character work). Parker Croft really stood out as John, the connoisseur of all things sexual he finds on the internet - I think we'll be seeing him again in a lot of projects in the future. The rest of the ensemble cast was relatively strong as well. The plot could have been a lot tighter, as it drifts in and out of the many vague storylines of the various characters and doesn't leave anyone really satisfied in the end. But then again, perhaps that was the intention of the filmmakers. The film lacks something in the visual department, but apparently was shot on a less-than-ideal format out of necessity. Watching some of the bonus features gave me a little more insight into the production of the movie, which was made on a minuscule budget but a couple friends after graduating from college. It was definitely a decent first effort and I think if they had an actual budget in place (and a real crew, not just random friends) their sophomore project has the potential of being really funny. Definitely worth checking out if you like the teen comedy genre, but are looking for something a little bit different.

I could tell by the trailer that this was a film shot on a very low budget but that never stopped me from enjoying movies before and wasn't going to on this one. I guess if you wanted to you could compare this to the dozens of comedies that came before it that dealt with sexy women and men talking about and making jokes about sex and you would be right but some how they pulled it off pretty well here. Many of the jokes were very funny and there were some very memorable scenes in the film to say the least, the director kept the jokes and pace going at a very fast rate so you never have any time to bored. The film contains everything a man could want from a teen comedy such as this including half naked women and loads of raunchy sex jokes. After watching some of the bonus features I found out that the film indeed was shot on a minuscule budget which came as no surprise but at the same time I felt everyone involved in the production did a fantastic job considering the resources at hand. The cast is made up of mostly unknowns but I thought each and everyone of them did a terrific job playing their roles. Also the film has two friendly faces in Bronson Pinchot and Corey Feldman who both not only did a fine job in their limited roles but they also brought the film up a notch as far as star power goes. What you see is what you get most of the time with a movie like this and many might want to call this an "American Pie" rip-off but to me it plays more like a smaller more teen version of "Clerks". For what it is I felt the film did a terrific job at keeping me entertaining while being a bit different than all the other films I have seen in the genre, it was certainly well-written. If you like the genre I recommend picking this one up it will have you laughing till the very end.