A Good Old Fashioned Orgy Review

2.5 stars out of 4

Of all the raunchy comedies to come out so far this year (“Bridesmaids,” “Horrible Bosses,” “The Hangover Part 2”) “A Good old Fashioned Orgy” has the stupidest premise of them all: “Hey! You shouldn’t have a regular life, with a good job and husband or wife. You should just party all the time and have an orgy with your friends.”

It focuses on eight people who have been friends since college. Eric (a cool and confident Jason Sudeikis), Alison (Lake Bell), Sue (Michelle Booth), Adam (Nick Kroll), McCrudden (Zach Galifinakis wannabe Tyler Labine), Willow (Angela Sarafyan), Laura (Lindsey Sloane) and Duquez (Martin Starr). They love to party and ridicule each other for trying to have lives outside of partying.

 But trouble comes when their party house (Eric’s family’s summer home in The Hamptons) is put up for sale. So they decide to have one last celebration over Labor Day weekend. A good old-fashioned orgy…because, you know, regular wild parties aren’t cutting it.

Now, the movie may be stupid but I do give writer/director duo Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck some credit for choosing a bold premise. They’re fully aware of what kind of movie they’re making and they embrace it. They don’t call the film “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy” and then not deliver.

There’s a moment in the film when you think that maybe, they aren’t going to do the orgy and that it’s an elaborate way for these friends to get mad at each other and then make up, and so become closer friends. But the orgy happens all right and it delivers what it promises. There were some funny sexual gags (things I can’t say here) and then there were things that were just awkward.

 The film moves at a nice pace, which is always a good thing in these kinds of movies.  It follows a clear path and has a clear destination to reach. There’s a quick scene at the beginning that establishes where the characters work and come from and then it’s off to The Hamptons for multiple parties, getting the idea for the orgy, planning it, and then the big moment. It never goes around in circles.

While some were better than others, the entire cast worked surprisingly well with one another, with Sudeikis and Bell being the standouts.  And more often than not they were responsible for making the jokes funny. Also, there was a nice balance between males and females, no gender completely dominated the picture and they were all on the same level as one another.

However, “Orgy” still suffers from one major problem, which is that it doesn’t have heart. It tries to have emotion. In the beginning we see that Eric doesn’t get along with his father but that’s never again addressed. And towards the end the friends have an explosive back and forth about their friendship but it gets resolved too quickly. It’s like Gregory and Huyck were too afraid to slow the movie down and let this drama play out, in danger of making it depressing.

Also, there’s a side romance between Eric and his realtor Kelly (Leslie Bibb) that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the movie. Bibb does the best she can with the material but her character isn’t in the central action. She doesn’t know about the orgy, nor does she ever find out. The point of the movie is that these friends are supposed to be closer after having the orgy, yet Eric and Kelly getting together becomes the more important thing at the end.

Despite all the good things I’ve said about the film I can’t really see a lot of people getting enthusiastic about going to see a movie called “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.” It’s better than you would think but it’s still incredibly stupid and a bold premise can only go so far.