Featuring: 16 college-age students who are usually drunk
Director: Rick De Oliveira
Producers: Mary-Ellis Bunim, Jonathan Murray, Jamie Schutz, Rick de Oliveira
Music: Michael Suby
U.S. Distributor: New Line Cinema
The Real Cancun is a colossal disappointment. Not because it's superficial and shallow – those characteristics pretty much go with the territory – but because it's boring. This is the kind of fare that would be at home on late night cable, where its repetitiveness and mindlessness might offer channel surfers a cure for insomnia. What I mistakenly believed could represent 90 minutes of low-brow entertainment (a so-called "guilty pleasure") instead made me feel like someone had filched the price of admission from my wallet. Expecting some T&A? It's there, but don't look away from the screen for too long, or you'll miss it. Hoping for some hot, "hard-R" sex? Go elsewhere. Everyone in The Real Cancun is cognizant of the hidden cameras, so they do it under the covers. Hoping to see some drinking? You're in luck there – that's basically all that happens throughout the entire movie. There are plenty of body shots, but, as any fun-loving party-person knows, the joy in that activity is in doing it, not watching it.
The term "reality show" is a misnomer. There's nothing "real" about these so-called TV programs, which rely on contrivance. Their popularity, at least as far as producers are concerned, results from their inherent inexpensiveness. Now, unfortunately, this virus has infected multiplexes. The Real Cancun is disingenuous in many ways, not the least of which is its title. The Mexican resort presented in this movie has been sanitized for movie theater audiences. The same can be said of the participants and their circumstances. For example, despite all of the drinking, there's no vomiting.
The Real Cancun is not a documentary. It does not follow a random group of individuals who go to Mexico for Spring Break. Rather, the participants where chosen on the basis of auditions, and all expenses were picked up by the production company. Most of the "characters" are anonymous, recognizable more by their primary characteristics than by their names. There are The Twins, The Small Town Girl, The Two Black Guys, The Lothario, The Girl With A Boyfriend Back Home, The Party Dude, The Hard-To-Get Woman, The Best Friends, and The Shy Guy. Of these, I can only recall one name – The Shy Guy is Alan.
The movie purports to follow 16 college-age students as they carouse their way around Cancun. Most of them aren't very interesting, in part because they don't have enough exposure for their stories to gain depth. The restless camera is constantly on the move, and the editors don't like keeping anyone on screen for more than a minute or two before cutting to someone else. Thus, everything comes across like a jumble of mini-soap operas with various men and women playing musical beds.
The exception is Alan, who catches the filmmakers' attention to the point where they give him enough screen time for his story to attain an arc. Alan is straight out of a John Hughes movie – a virgin teetotaler who emerges from his shell, takes his first drink (then moves on to body shots), and hooks up with a girl. At least as presented here, he's a sweet kid, and he represents the only glimpse of humanity in this overlong mess. Of course, a minority of viewers will see a down side to Alan's story. What to some will be the tale of a young man finding a measure of self-confidence will to others be the chronicle of the loss of innocence.
Narrative elements aside, The Real Cancun is simply bad filmmaking. Part of that has to do with its being rushed into theaters. (It was originally supposed to come out during the summer, but the release date was significantly accelerated.) From a production standpoint, nearly everything is substandard. The poor quality of the cinematography is exceeded only by the horrendous editing, which often cuts away just when things are getting interesting. The wet T-shirt contest, which should have been the T&A centerpiece, is butchered beyond belief. The cuts are so jarring that it renders the entire sequence incoherent and borderline unwatchable. Whose nipples were those that just flashed by?
The Real Cancun is the lastest brainchild of Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray, co-creators of MTV's "The Real World." Their expectation is that the massive fan base of the TV series will flock to theaters to see the movie, their desire fueled by titillating advertisements that promise more than The Real Cancun delivers. There's a place in American pop culture for enjoyable trash – movies that unashamedly deliver low-brow entertainment. This isn't it, though. The Real Cancun fails as a documentary, a narrative feature, a character piece, a sociological study, and soft-core porn. If I want to see something this badly made, I'll save a trip to the theater and watch the next installment of any of about a dozen TV "reality programs" instead.
© 2003 James Berardinelli