Extreme Movie
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this movie.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that this sex comedy wants to push the envelope for tastelessness and shock. In addition to requisite female toplessness, the camera fixates on a sex toy that depicts a realistic, disembodied pelvis/vagina. Characters are high-schoolers (played by actors who look age-correct, for once) engaged in sexual practices and preoccupations, from basic attempts to lose virginity with a prostitute to bizarre fetishes with dwarves, Nazi regalia, and Abraham Lincoln. Though campy dialogue isn't strewn with swearing (a la Martin Scorsese), pretty much the whole range of profanity is uttered for comical effect, with both clinical and street-slang language. Locker-room humor references pornography, erections, vibrators, flatulence, etc. Heavy drinking in one segment, demeaning black stereotypes in another.
Community Reviews
Too Much Sexual Content And Language
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What's the Story?
There's no real plot in EXTREME MOVIE, just a catch-all of teenage sexual jokes and body-function embarrassments, all befalling characters in a very uninhibited high-school sex-ed class (the instructor welcomes the group with a tirade of R-rated obscenities, to prove that he's "keeping it real"). Two horny students, in a parody of the 1980s teen comedy Weird Science, conjure a perfect woman via computer, only to get a raunchy fat lady; a girl accidentally lodges a vibrating cell phone in her loins; a new line of greeting cards deliver the news of sexually-transmitted diseases. In drop-in segments, actor Matthew Lillard, as himself, dispenses very un-PC dating advice in Public-Service-announcement form.
Is It Any Good?
This movie is completely skippable. A laugh-out-loud, witty, creative compilation of ribald humor...was done by Woody Allen in 1972's Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid To Ask. In comparison, Extreme Movie is an extreme waste of time, and offensively so because (unlike the Woody Allen satire) it seems so desperate in catering to a school-aged audience.
Some Saturday Night Live writer-performers supposedly contributed to the uneven and generally juvenile segments, and a few of the better bits could have stood alone well as trangressive humor -- like the one about a lonely fat kid and his love affair with a vagina-shaped rubber sex toy (it's appalling at first, but unrolls with imaginative comic logic). The puerile blackout-sketch structure doesn't build much plotline or go anywhere, though an upbeat musical number about filming a porno movie is evidently supposed to be more or less the climax -- and no, that is not our idea of a dirty joke).
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about dirty jokes and their appeal.
Why do you think a movie like this got made? What parts are funny and what aren't?
Use Extreme Movie as a gateway to viewing an acclaimed documentary feature entitled The Aristocrats, which spotlights a gallery of comedians telling and analyzing the same dirty joke and its legendary history, getting at the nature of what makes us laugh.
Movie Details
- In theaters: December 12, 2008
- On DVD or streaming: February 24, 2009
- Cast: Frankie Muniz, Jamie Kennedy, Michael Cera
- Director: Adam Jay Epstein
- Studio: Dimension
- Genre: Comedy
- Run time: 78 minutes
- MPAA rating: R
- MPAA explanation: strong pervasive sexual content, nudity and language - all involving teens
- Last updated: April 5, 2022
Our Editors Recommend
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Dumb and Dumber
The caviar of low-brow, gross-out comedy.
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Zoolander
Surprisingly entertaining modeling spoof has sex, swearing.
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