The Real Cancun (R, 2003)

As with its Real World series, MTV's THE REAL CANCUN involves filming "real" people -meaning attractive, insecure youths, not actors-in everyday situations such as tropical locations where they are forced to interact with carefully selected roommates and the resulting antics are craftily edited for greatest effect. In this case, the cushy location is a color-saturated, beach-front hotel, sporting the most tolerant of cleaning staffs, and the lovely, young strangers are filmed in almost every aspect of their lives (bathrooms are thankfully off limits but everything else is pretty much laid out) for the duration of their showy but finally forgettable spring break. Days of non-stop filming are reduced to a handful of vignettes about who is going to sleep with whom. If there is a main character, it is the geeky, sober Alan who -- thanks to peer pressure -- finds booze and then a girlfriend, as he takes on a new, more confident personality like a modern day Sandra Dee transforming from bobby socks to black leather at the end of Grease.

This is not your parents' spring break. The bands on stage are singing lyrics explicit to a different order of magnitude than those of the Beach Boys. However, as with any ode to spring break, certain features seem timeless, including the boozy fumes and the fog of pheromones that float down from the screen in a palpable haze. Even for the genre, The Real Cancun seems as thin as the bikini straps worn by sunburned girls, an unreal little peep show which will leave some viewers with hangovers and others with a longing for the responsibility-free days of young adulthood. While there is quite a bit of raw, often unintentional, humor in laughing at their antics, the hangover of the movie comes from the sour aftertaste of watching people getting genuinely hurt by one another.

In this place where belly buttons are the shot glasses of choice and it is usually enough to know someone's first name before having sex, this movie reminds everyone over the age of 24 that they are no longer invited to the party, but that it is the same party that has existed since the invention of the teenager. Ninety minutes of partying with these 16 college-age kids will be enough to send most parents home with a hangover and a strong desire to send their kids to labor in the fields during all future spring breaks.

Studio: New Line
Director: Rick de Oliveira
Cast: Benjamin Fletcher, Brittany Brown-Hart, Nicole Frilot
Genre: Documentary
Run time: 90 minutes
Theatrical release: April 25, 2003
DVD release: July 1, 2003
MPAA Rating: R
MPAA explanation: strong sexuality/nudity, language and partying