Barely Legal
Barely Legal
R | 21 October 2005 (USA)
Barely Legal Trailers

Teenager Deacon works at a video shop, and his buddies, Fred and Matt, sell the bootleg porno films he acquires. Deacon gets fired, but the pals have the bright idea of filming their own Internet porn flick in order to make money and become more popular at school. Hijinks ensue as they cast and create their movie, but porn industry player Vic Ramalot grows jealous of their burgeoning success and tries to put a stop to the project.

Reviews
KnotMissPriceless

Why so much hype?

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Cebalord

Very best movie i ever watch

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Senteur

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

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Murphy Howard

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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wes-connors

In a teaser, we see three young men hung up on meat hooks get their pants removed by a pornographic film actor. He orders castration. With your appetite wetted, our young star takes over as narrator to explain how this all began. Around his 17th birthday, good-looking blond Erik von Detten (as Deacon Lewis) is watching porn with his two nerdy pals. The trio agree the movie is terrible and decide to make one of their own. "Adult films by virgins, for virgins," is how Mr. Von Detten presents the idea. They think this will make a lot of money, leading to the purchase of a car and an end to their virginity. "American Pie" writer David H. Steinberg came up with this one. Tony Denman (as Fred) and Daniel Farber (as Matt) are marginally believable as virgins. One of director David M. Evans' better scenes is when the trio don computerized facial hair and go to the "Pretty Kitty" strip club to find a sexy female lead for their movie.** National Lampoon's Barely Legal After School Special (2003) David M. Evans ~ Erik von Detten, Tony Denman, Daniel Farber, Sarah-Jane Potts

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johnnyboyz

When I happened to stumble across this film, it was entitled Barely Legal and not After School Special. Truth is, the film is barely watchable and feels more like a drunken after dinner daydream than an after school special. Is there an audience for this sort of material? Are there people that will enjoy a film like Barely Legal? The film isn't really about anything as much as it is a documentation of producing pornography or the meek attempt at making pornography and all the hassle that it involves. What really grates, and this is an underlying theme, is that watching a really bad film is one thing but watching a really bad film about people attempting to make a really bad film within the universe of what we're seeing is just painful.The film, a part of the National Lampoon series (whatever that is), was directed by David M. Evans (answers on a postcard as to what the 'M' might stand for) whose previous crimes against cinema include the 3rd and 4th Beethoven outings some years ago and who is also scheduled to direct the up and coming 'Ace Ventura Junior' film. That should be, if Jim Carrey sequels/prequels not starring Jim Carrey are anything to go by in the form of Son of the Mask and Dumb and Dumberer, utterly unwatchable at the very best.This particular little travesty however follows three young American boys at high school as they attempt to feed off Tony Montana's ideation of 'getting the money, getting the power and getting the women'. Yeah, trouble is Tony Montana had nothing to do with making pornography and Barely Legal has nothing to do with chasing the American dream: it's just clueless, horny kids using porn as a front to get closer to girls. The film is fundamentally flawed in every retrospect. Any film entitled 'Barely Legal' which revolves around people making pornography and still manages to worm its way into a realm of the '15' certificate over here in Britain instead of the '18' certificate has to have done something cataclysmically wrong during the making process. Clearly, the BBFC deem it not all that bad in terms of gratuity and I just wonder if that was the certificate the makers were aiming for – I doubt it.The boys making the film are Deacon (von Detten); Fred (Denman) and Matt (Farber), three hapless individuals given mercilessly unfunny introductions about their relationships toward girls and some of their 'habits' when it comes to communicating with them. The film totally disregards women from the off but the sad fact is that's an absolute given in this genre. There is lots of slow motion, lots of hair flicking and cutesy smiling girls looking flirtatious although any sane viewer will just yawn at it all. At one point in the film, a character whilst making the porno exclaims something along the lines of "Women's points of view don't even matter in these sorts of movies" and he's sort of hit the nail on the head for all the wrong reasons – when he says 'these sorts of movies', is it the real film actually recognising how rubbish it knows it is? If so then it's admitting it is rubbish; if not, then it's admitting to its blatant sexism right there.I think when the people that wrote this actually finished it, they were twenty or so pages short of 90 odd minutes. Thus, the messy and dull narrative that opens up to do with Deacon loosing his friends as the project falls apart is silly and doesn't work; it feels thrown in and manufactured out of the primary story about kids wanting girls so they make porn. It's the overall idea I don't understand. When will people learn that pornography is not funny? When will people realise that films about pornography are not funny? Glimpses or very quick cuts of bras, nipples and so forth do-not-make-people-laugh, simple; they are an on screen visualisation of someone's fantasy writ down and writ large across the screen for others to see – it's not funny and it's a waste of everyone's time.IMDb has this film on its 'release dates' page opening at Cannes, in May 2003 – it's one of those screenings at Cannes you just wish you were there for, purely for the reaction and the witnessing of the mass walkout I'm sure there was, that is of course if the fact it was shown there is true in the first place. Supposedly, Irreversible is the most walked out of film at Cannes ever, but that's only because no one was paying any attention to the screenings of this junk. Everywhere else, this was direct to DVD and the cast probably wanted it swept under the carpet for good measure. When the friendships have been broken down and patched up in doubly quick time, there's time for local porn king Vic Ramalot (Sanz) to waltz around in public complete with gun drawn hunting for the kids who he assumes to be up and coming rivals threatening his business. It really is that daft and that bad.

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westsidemon

skip it...National Lampoon's continue trend to disappoint dates way back this film, Spring Break, Gold Diggers, please i'd rather not continue this list National Lampoon's used to stand for smart, sexy, outrageous comedy to me...what happened? i mean i did not laugh a smile once throughout this film if it can be called that anywho, hope things go up from this and other horrible films that should have never been made...TV Reality comes to mind...absolute garbage...i'd really rather see them try to make some quality films instead of trying to mass produce a bunch of junk, shoddy films with fancy looking covers and titles that don't deliver in anyway but just drag on same old tried jokes and progress in the same manner since the 90's...sorry National Lampoon, but this film, like many other unfortunate opportunities i've given due to the name, reputation, and heritage...well, looks like somewhere, somehow, something went terrible wrong

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Polaris_DiB

Gross-out comedy.Have you seen American Pie? Of course you have, everyone has. Have you seen National Lampoon's other stuff? Of course you have, everyone has. Have you seen Animal House? Of course--wait... wait... I caught a large portion of it on the television but I haven't seen all of it. Well that's okay, I got the point.Did you like those films? Well, whichever way you answer the above question will determine what your enjoyment of this film will be like. I myself don't really think those films are THAT BAD, they're just not THAT GOOD. That wonderfully politically correct way of saying that this film was pure fluff but I laughed anyway.Well I didn't necessarily laugh, but it was amusing. I think if it weren't for the fact that the father figure tries to pull a Eugene Levy, the stupid high school bully is trying to be a Stifler, and sometimes the characters seem to do things that not only don't fit with their character in the film, but don't match anything that happens in real life, this would be a pretty good movie.Even despite those details (which are actually minor in the way they were presented), the film does its job and does it right. The overall structure is clichéd, but mostly the tone isn't. Scenes like the porno actress having dinner with the family when the girlfriend walks in, or the fact that said girlfriend isn't what he's looking for in the first place, stuff like that is enough to relax and enjoy the film if you're willing to not worry too much about wasting your time.I would have to say that, if anything, the whole competitor storyline and all that Scarface stuff really got to me the most, considering I find the Scarface dream to be an utterly banal and hideous allusion for everyone to always make, and the competitor was just kind of stupid overall.--PolarisDiB

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