SOURCE-Sony DVD
National Lampoon,use to be the name that you trusted for funny movies and a great magazine. Then by the mid to late 90s anyone could license the National Lampoon name and put it above the title of their film. Which lead to piles of really shitty films with National Lampoon over the title.
It was 2004 or maybe 2005. I had recently been linked up to a torrent site that was packed with screener dvds. Nice rips of these screeners and usualy in the DIVX codec. Bonus I had 2 dvd players that could play DIVX files. While browsing that site one day after work I saw the title National Lampoon's Barely Legal and grabbed a rip. Burnt it to a cd-r and the plan was watch it my next day off. Somehow that rip on the CD-R got tossed onto a spindle and sat unwatched until 2007.
Was a shitty time in my life I needed a laugh and saw National Lampoon and yea I knew the odds were this movie would suck. Still put it in the player and hit play. A bit over 90s minutes later it was over and I had laughed more in that hour and 1/2 than I had in weeks. Which is why years later when I found the above pictured DVD at a thrift I grabbed it. Having lost that CDR years ago.
Our leads are 3 guys in high school. They run the AV club and use that to cover their side business.
Bit of history. I'm almost 50. So when I was in high school it wasn't like now where everyone has access to porn. Nope just having a Playboy gave you status. And thanks to someone I knew that owned a video store,and me owning two VHS vcrs,I had access to porn tapes. And could make copies. Most of my 3 years at high school I was copying these movies and selling them. Cause I thought about it back then guys my age wanted 3 things,beer/pot/porn. And the first two if you got caught with them at school you got in big trouble. But get caught with porn they just took it from you and sent you home for a day. Many days I would show up to the high school with 4 or 5 vhs in the bback pack,labeled as Married with Children reruns,which it was actually stuff like One Night In Bangkok or Sweat ont here.
These high school guys,one of whom works at a video store,are making copies of the pornos and selling them. Then the video store guy loses the job. So now they gotta get a supply of porn to sell.
And they come up with the idea of filming and selling porn. They call their production company and website After School Special and claim it is ran by the nerdy guys you knew in high school.
Of course to make porn they need women. So armed with bad fake IDs our trio go off to the nearest strip club. They find a lady interested iin making the movies and our wacky hyjinx start.
The cast is odd,a mixture of people you will know then others that have solid careers in b movies. Tom Arnold is the father of the main guy. You got Horatio Sanz as the Ron Jeremy Stand in. Amy Smart as the pretty girl that is interested in our lead guy.
Speaking of Horatio,he gets mad cause these After School Special guys are making too much money. And we get a crazed Horatio trying to track down and kill our leads.
Now yea this isn't nearly at the level of the comedis National Lampoon was putting out in the 70s and 80s. But it is way way better than shit like RoboDoc or that second Van Wilder movie.
As for the second title. Guessing since National Lampoon is a very US thing.So outside the US and maybe Canada,this movie is known as After School Special.
So if you want a halfway decent comedy,with a plot that by 2003 was becoming a thing of the past,give Barely Legal a watch.
National Lampoon's Barely Legal gets a C+
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