The Binge

"Gonna get high, gonna get baked til every inch of us just aches. Gonna do lines, gonna pop tabs, gonna do everything we grab. Take some shrooms, smoke some crack, chase the dragon and shoot some smack. Gonna get high, gonna get baked til every inch of us just aches. Gonna do lines, gonna pop tabs, gonna do everything we grab. Gonna cook meth, going so far, gonna give hand jobs in the car. Gonna get high, gonna get baked, til every inch of us just aches.

The only thing that matters is we get so fucking hiiiiiiiiigggghhhhh."

When The Binge hits the musical moment it's been telegraphing since it's opening minutes you'll want to turn it off and run screaming from the room at that stage but you'll be so far in you'll have to keep watching just to see can it get any worse. Can it?

Boogie Nights. One of many films homaged during The Binge. When you see these little nods to classics you'll smile, feel a little smug maybe for getting the reference and then you'll feel wistful when you think you could be watching those instead of this piece of trash. The Binge is a bad film. It's painfully unfunny and you won't care whether the characters onscreen live or die. You'll feel bad about yourself for choosing to spend your time this way and worst of all, you'll feel auld and cranky that you're watching something this irresponsible. Why irresponsible? Yeah, let me tell you about the plot line.

Once a year in America all drugs are legal. People of course lose the run of themselves and go haywire. Towns and cities get trashed and the more responsible members of the community dread this annual event. People like Principal Carlson (Vince Vaughn). He wants his students to behave, to not indulge. His teenage students have no intention of listening to him at all, and 2 of them, Andrew (Eduardo Franco) and Hags (Dexter Darden), want to make a real name for themselves as party animals. The third part of this friend trio is Griffin (Skyler Gisondo), he's nervous, he's never even drank before, let alone done a line and the thought of The Binge terrifies him. Until he finds out the girl he fancies, Lena (Grace Van Dien), is dying to let her hair down. So he reluctantly joins in. Only one issue though, Lena is Principal Carlson's daughter and he's out to find her and keep her safe.

It sounds like a giggle doesn't it. A comedy about a subject on the lips of everyone. Set in a country with a massive problem with opioid drug abuse. Maybe it might be a commentary on the state of modern day USA and it's relationship with drugs with a few laughs thrown in. Plus the trailers make it look like a cross between Superbad and The Purge (a film with a similar storyline to this but replace drugs with crime) and those two films were good so it stands to reason this will be. Right? RIGHT? WRONG. We get cocaine races, a lot of walking, comedy hallucinations, exploding cows, sub Farrelly Brothers jokes about shit, piss and fucking and a turn from Vince Vaughn that would make you wonder how on earth he ever became famous. Leading man Skylar Gismondo (so good in Santa Clarita Diet) just looks embarrassed throughout and rightly so. It's lowest common denominator stuff that wastes every opportunity it has to take a pop at it's subject, instead going for the easy route everytime. Near the end we see someone overdosing and it's played off as a laugh. There's no repercussions, there's no morals, there's no point to any of it.

If you enjoy this, there's probably something broken inside you. It's dreadful, lazy, boring, meaningless. It's no surprise no studio would go near this leading to a streaming premiere. It's why you've heard nothing about this. Reefer Madness is edgier FFS.

Christ I feel like I should sign off on this review as 'Outraged from Tunbridge Wells'.

Streaming online now if you hate yourself.