A Good Old Fashioned Orgy movie review

Director: Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck

Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Leslie Bibb, Lake Bell,

Michelle Borth, Nick Kroll and others

Rating: ***

  ‘It’s time we took back what was taken away from us. Before we could reach puberty, AIDS came in. Our parents were freaks. They did a lot of this in their time and our children are freaks too’, argue a bunch of school friends, now in their 30s, while justifying the plan to have their first orgy amidst apprehensions galore.

  The orgy would perhaps be their last theme-based party, a weekend tradition that has kept the group closely knit ever since they left school. And what turns out to be is an evening that packs a heavy punch of reality for each of the party-makers, who not just end up shedding their clothes but a lot of emotional baggage too.
 With its titillating title, A Good Old Fashioned Orgy naturally puts a lot of sex into the mind of viewers before they even step into the theatre. But under the garb of sex, this one actually teaches you a lesson or two on friendship, love and relationships. Eric (Jason Sudeikis), the party house provider and planner, hasn’t had a relationship in a long time and gets a foot cramp whenever he masturbates. His ‘pet’ friend Mike (Tyler Labine) has nothing better to do than hovering around his best buddy. Alison (Lake Bell) is carrying on with an unhappy relationship while Laura (Lindsay Sloane) hasn’t had sex for more than a year now. Mamma’s boy Adam (Nick Kroll) has refrained from having sex with fear of viruses and has lost his job after his blackberry fell into the pool at one of the parties.

 So everyone’s perpetually in a fix and the orgy becomes that one excuse to get them out of their miseries and accept reality! It brings them to drop everything --- pretence, social awkwardness and self-doubt --- that’s hindering happiness in their lives. Sex, here, becomes symbolic to countless inhibitions that wear off and enable the characters to put things into perspective.

  A Good Old Fashioned Orgy features a bunch of fairly average actors in fairly normal situations (except the end, ofcourse). The scratchy old world print almost makes it feel like a parcel from the ’80s, without any eye-catching treatment of today’s films (in sync with its name maybe). The humour doesn’t leave you in splits every time a dirty one-liner is spouted. Yet, this is a film, which credits some relevance despite having a subject that’s intended at offering nothing more than frivolous fun!