Ready or Not (2009)

In Ready or Not, a bachelor party gone all out puts four best friends in Mexico. Chris (Christian Oliver), Marc (Seamus Dever), Lawrence (Evan Hulmuth), and Dean (Jonathan Murphy) are buddies. They've gone through the best and the worst of times together, but Chris is about to get married. Marc doesn't want him to, and his thinking is that maybe a wild, unplanned adventure in the form of one hell of a bachelor party will pull him back over into staying a bachelor forever-such is the dream of Marc due to his status as a die-hard, eternal bachelor and lady's man (or more accurately, a "player").

It's been a while since I've been to a bachelor party, and though I'm not a big partier, I'd rather go to one as opposed to hearing about one or seeing a movie about one. Call me a bore, but seeing guys in tuxedos walking around Mexico with oddly happy expressions on their faces and a desire to breathe in booz like air isn't my idea of compelling viewing material. College kid immaturity is an affront to my intellect.

Pardon me. I wasn't totally honest a second ago. Let me emphasize my real feelings for the college-level immaturity of partying young adults: I hate them, a loathe them, I absolutely despise them! Gatherings of 24-year-olds who are still being wow-ed by the details of female anatomy and the affects of a shot-glass filled with vodka turn my stomach. If mindless partying still fascinates you, then your mind hasn't come very far from a scanty schoolboy mentality. But I digress.

These guys don't act like guys who just got dropped off in the Mexican desert, not at all. I am appalled at their stupidity, in fact. The only funny part of the film was a scene in which, venturing into a church, Lawrence goes snooping around in the back for some wine. He finds it, but before lifting his loot, he knocks over another bottle of wine, causing the contents to run down the eyes of a Virgin Mary statue. The pious women who stand praying to her are convinced the statue "crying" blood is a miracle. That was ingenious, but nothing else was.

Seeing fools getting thrown in jail because they can't pay for food, and walking into a teepee out in the middle of nowhere and starting to trip out on peyote is, shall we say, moronic. But I'm sure many will be taken by such juvenile antics and find them a blast. Our four morons land in Mexico and wander around until they find a wealthy "connected" Mexican man and his guarded mansion. He takes them in. They get to swim in his pool. He hooks them up with massages and babes, but there's one rule: "Stay away from my daughter," Puri (Fernanda Romero). Do they honor the rule? Go ahead and give it a guess. That's right. The answer in your head is the correct one.

When the flimsy, teen-appealing plot seems like it's dying, it's actually going somewhere. And though not beyond the ability to predict, the ending may just surprise you and possibly even make you feel like the up-to-then pointless viewing you've endured wasn't all for naught.

Interspersed throughout the surprisingly respectable dialogue are allusions to the bachelor lifestyle being a superior one to that of marriage. Marc: "What's your favorite Mexican food?" Chris: "I don't know. Rice and beans." Marc: "Now, I'm going to feed you rice and beans, and nothing but rice and beans, for the rest of your life. Do you want that?" The application of the exchange you can't miss. What the film seeks to accomplish it does a fair job of doing, but for me, the party didn't get started till the movie ended. C-

(JH)