A law firm slacker has been dumped by his girlfriend, is ridiculed by his
boss, and has failed the bar exam twice. His legal briefs are so poorly
constructed that the head of the law firm has them rewritten by his
20-year-old son. The only reason why our hero Matt is still employed is that
the boss wants to use him to house-sit. The boss is leaving town for five days
and Matt is assigned to watch the house and is given an ultimatum: take care
of the house, allow no visitors, and use the five days to study for the bar.
If the house is not perfect when the boss returns, Matt is fired. Even if the
house is perfect, if Matt fails the bar again, he's still fired.
Needless to say, the boss's two kids want to use the luxurious house to
have lavish parties, and various other slackers and stoners do their best to
congregate at the pool. Matt has only sporadic success in preventing the
revelers from wreaking havoc on his boss's property. Worst of all, the house
is terrorized by Bingo the Monkey Clown, who seems to be pursuing the boss's
sexy teenage daughter.
You don't want to spend any time on this film. It's a careless, unoriginal
cheapie made with inferior production values and hammy, amateurish actors. No
cliché is left unturned, and some ideas are introduced then forgotten. On the one hand, it tries to
be a merry, raunchy lark, ala Bachelor Party, but it comes up short in both
the wit of the script and the professionalism of the performances. On the
other hand, the script tries to develop some meaningful storylines about
Matt's career and his attempts to get back with his ex-girlfriend, but those
sub-plots tend to be just throwaways. In other words, The Pool Party would
like to combine sincerity and raunch like American Pie, but ends up being more
like one of the straight-to-vid Pie sequels. Except nowhere near as good.
.
If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to
read the
explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by
our definition, a
C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs
and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:
