Review of Quest, The

Introduction

Spring Break - it`s a uniquely American phenomenon that has absolutely no parallel this side of the Puddle. It`s the physical manifestation of that old saying about spring - when young mens` fancies turn to what the girls have been thinking about all winter. As you would expect, Spring Break takes place between March and April each year as the colleges close up shop. Millions of teenagers head to the coast or to island destinations in a salmon-like migration to get drunk, flash each other and hopefully get laid. The tradition is a thoroughly Americanised, secular version of Mardi Gras (which the British celebrate as pancake day).

I was very disappointed with The Quest. The publicity material I had seen pitched the movie as one of those American Pie style rite-of-passage/ gross-out tales. You know the kind of thing - socially inept, pustular adolescent hopes to get laid but finds true love. Well, The Quest is none of the above. It is all about getting laid, or at the very least copping a look at some boobies. The difference is it`s done for real.

You know that MTV Jackass series where Johnny Knoxville and a bunch of other morons try to hospitalise themselves for your entertainment, well The Quest is about the same sort of moron trying to get himself some action in a reproductive sort of sense.

It`s painful viewing. Possibly more painful than that time one of the Jackasses had every inch of his body hair waxed including his eyebrows. Except this isn`t funny. It`s tragic. It`s encouraging-millions-of-stupid-spring-break-teenagers-to-fornicate tragic. These are young men who think of sex as often as they take a breath. Hormones on the hoof. And the girls aren`t a whole lot more sensible as, boozed out of their gourds, they will flash their boobs at any and all on the promise of cheap beads (possibly some kind of commemoration of the white man`s shafting the Native Americans over Manhattan, perhaps?)

Video

Presented in anamorphic widescreen 16:9, the film originates on a mixture of film and digital video. The picture is very acceptable but nothing to really write home about.

Audio

The soundtrack, which is laden with songs doubtless available on the soundtrack album, is in Dolby Digital 5.1, which would seem to be overkill for something like this.

Features

The movie comes with a set of additional shorts under the collective title of "Hedonism 101", and a set of deleted scenes. There are subtitles for the hard of hearing.

Conclusion

Carbone and Fleiss, the directors and producers of this exercise, are old hands at the reality tv game. If the name seems familiar, Fleiss is a second cousin of Hollywood madam Heidi. The movie benefitted on its R1 release from a different title - "Drunken Jackasses - The Quest", so don`t say I didn`t warn you.