Extreme Dating Movie Review

Wait just a sec. Shouldn't this really be National Lampoon's Extreme Dating? What with the tired, insulting plot, B-list cast, and quickie production values that emphasize sex appeal (but offer no actual sex), this really should have earned the Lampoon seal of mediocrity.

Extreme Dating doesn't even reach mediocrity, actually. It's a stupid, painful movie about the lengths to which a collection of losers (we're meant to think they're kinda geeky cool, but really they're far from it) will go in order to find love. Or at least get a little nookie. Devon Sawa (aging badly) gets tongue-tied around the ladies. Amanda Detmer has a reputation for being bitchy and accident-prone. And Andrew Keegan is just a cocky, god-awful ass.

Ultimately -- after a long setup that makes us think a sex comedy is in store for us -- Amanda and Devon hatch a plan to kidnap Andrew and the girl he's lusting after (Jamie-Lynn DiScala), the idea being that she'll fall in love with him when he breaks them out of captivity. Only they don't count on hiring ex-cons as their muscle in the scheme. These goons (including a sad Meat Loaf) decide to kidnap the duo for real and demand a ransom. Hilarity ensues!

Not quite. The machinations of the film are at once unbelievable and eye-rollingly unentertaining. There's not much new to the scheme-gone-wrong story, except for how blatantly mean-spirited it is. Keegan plays his now-trademarked better-than-everyone jerk, and Detmer's oops-I-kicked-you-in-the-face schtick gets old, fast. By the time the movie devolves into a police investigation into the kidnapping, you'll begin wondering if the movie will ever be over, and whether anyone involved in it will ever work again.