Review: This ‘Search Party’ should have been abandoned
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The dreadful bromantic comedy “Search Party” was shot in 2013, but feels a whole lot moldier. This spectacularly dumb and unfunny film will likely bore even the staunchest fans of the “Hangover” movies, of which “Search” is a kind of distant, fatally impoverished cousin.
Three goofy Los Angelenos — Jason (T.J. Miller), Evan (Adam Pally) and Nardo (Thomas Middleditch) — who’ve been best buds since third grade find themselves on a nutty collision course after impulsive screw-up Jason wrecks Nardo’s wedding to Tracy (Shannon Woodward), convinced she’s wrong for him. (She’s not.)
A heartsick Nardo follows Tracy to the Mexican resort where she’s “honeymooning” alone but is waylaid by carjackers and forced to recruit Jason and Evan to save him. A series of interminable and asinine “comic”-action sequences follow — both north and south of the border — as Jason and Evan attempt to reach the increasingly imperiled Nardo.
“Old School” writer Scot Armstrong crashes and burns in his directorial debut, based on a script he wrote with Mike Gagerman and Andrew Waller. The trio trots out every down-Mexico-way cliché in the book. That is, when they’re not defaulting to bits about angry lesbians, men in tights and vomiting burros. Don’t ask.
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‘Search Party’
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, drug use, graphic nudity, and sexual content
Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Playing: AMC Burbank Town Center 8; also on VOD
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