Miss March

As I've noted before, sketch comedy is hit and miss by its nature. For every instant classic on "Saturday Night Live" there are five complete stinkers and five that would have been a lot better if they had quit at the two minute mark instead of rambling on for eight. For me there have been three consistently great sketch comedy shows. Britain's "Monty Python's Flying Circus," Canada's "The Kids in the Hall," and now we Americans finally have one to call our own, "The Whitest Kids U Know." My DVD of the first season has brought me countless hours of laughter. Some sketches I've watched easily upwards of twenty times. Had it not been for the presence of two of the "Whitest Kids," Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, I probably would have given "Miss March" a pass. As it is, I really wish I had.
"Miss March" tells the story of Eugene (Cregger), who went into a coma after a prom night accident, while his girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) waited for him upstairs. Unlike the rest of their classmates, Eugene and Cindi had remained abstinent up until the prom. The next thing Eugene knows, he's being re-awakened by a baseball bat to the head from his best friend Tucker (Moore). Four years have gone by and Eugene has some catching up to do. He wonders why Cindi isn't at the hospital with Tucker, who insists that Cindi has disappeared. That is until Tucker opens up the newest issue of Playboy. Cindi is Miss March, sending Eugene's head spinning. His only chance to win her back is to have Tucker bust him out of the hospital and get to the Playboy mansion.
As thoroughly uninspired as this premise is (the story is credited to three relative newcomers), I had hoped that Cregger and Moore (who wrote the screenplay and co-directed) would be able to mine comedy from the characters and the road trip storyline. What they deliver is surprisingly unimaginative and many of the gags feel recycled. Only a few moments here and there work (the most notable being Tucker's awkward phone message to the enraged girlfriend he left behind...after stabbing her in the face with a fork while she was having a seizure). Mostly though, "Miss March" just falls down time and time again. It's a terrible shame. Anyone who has watched "Whitest Kids" knows how funny these guys really are, even if their acting skills aren't quite on par with their writing skills.
I hope that Cregger and Moore's next venture into film is far better than this. These guys have it in them. 3.5/10.

Now I leave you with one of my favorite sketches from "The Whitest Kids U Know." I think the movies Moore pitches here would have all been better than "Miss March":



And while I'm at it, the trailer for Judd Apatow's (he actually wrote and directed this one) "Funny People," coming out this July: