Bad Movie Theater: Dare

So it took me about three days to watch this movie because I kept sad-quitting. The characters are all so weird, and pathetic and I didn’t like any of them. So I would minimize the window and do other stuff, but I kept coming back to it and getting sucked in again. Eventually I watched the whole thing, and I knew this had to be it’s fate.

I shouldn’t be so harsh, I’m going to spoil the shit out of this motherfucker, and I feel guilty about that so I will say this in its favor: it is hella easy to troll. Get some friends, some food, and drink and you are gonna have a good laugh at this film’s expense.

Dare starts with the typical high school movie formula: take an insanely beautiful actress, and ‘fake out’ her super-model good looks by putting her in slightly stupid clothes and a pony tail. Give her a goofy looking best friend and a giant backpack, and she’s every Hollywood nerd girl ever.


This is the taste of originality

And of course, the hot girl in nerd-face has a conflict with the 35 year old commercial actor playing the popular hot guy.


You can tell he’s the cool guy because he has an unconventional bookbag.

“Not” hot girl wants to be an actress, and asks a random Alan Cumming (who’s playing a great theater actor returned home to Florida in order to advance the plot) for advice.


Ugh, acting is, like, a craft, and you have to exppeerrience, like, liiife etc. and so on

Guess who looks like they’ve been doing a lot of cocaine. And don’t pretend, Cumming. I read your book.

Anyway, Alan insults the hottie, and she commits some supremely heinous teen angst.


I’m so full of emotions, I need to express that by drawing a red nail polish line across my neck. ERMAHGERD.

Which leads to her flash-fucking the cool guy at a high school party. This is where we move off the path of retread romantic comedy because it shows a somewhat realistic first time experience:

It’s really awkward.

They both make stupid faces.

And then it’s over.

Fake nerd starts wearing skirts, which signify her transition into womanhood, and her new-found semi-cool status is causing tension in her relationship with nerdy friend.


Geeze, why can’t you just be happy for me that I’m getting laid all the time and now you have no one to hang out with. Gawd.

At first you think it’s because the nerd has a crush on the girl, but he only has boners for cool guy. Eventually him and cool guy get drunk at cool guy’s indoor pool and nerd confesses that he’s never been kissed. Cool guy obliges with the most terrible first kiss ever:


Seriously, he just pecks him on the lower right side of his left cheek.

I can’t tell you how many times I had to replay the 15 seconds around this crappy kiss in order to actually get a screencap of it, it happens that fast.

The nerd is too grateful.


Thank you, kind sir, for a kiss my grandma would give me. I couldn’t possibly repay you.

Waaaaaaaaay

too grateful

OK, at least the beej scene was pretty steamy, something this movie hasn’t had much of at this point. Sadly, like the real life version of cool guy, this is where it peaks.

Here’s what I want to know: so you just spit the cum into the water and let the maintenance man take care of it? Chlorine will break that down, right?

Anyway, the nerd confesses his gayness to hottie BFF, and at first they were like


Oh, BTDubs, that guy I blew also happens to be the one your fucking. Hope you don’t mind

And then they were like


wat.

Dramatic cut to black.

There’s some exposition where we find out that cool guy lives in a giant house, and has panic attacks and absentee parents.

Then this happens:


Just me, cool guy, hanging out with this girl I bone, her gay BFF who blew me in my pool and his parents. Not awkward at all

Get it? Because the whole time hottie and homotti were lusting after cool guy and wishing they were him, all he wanted was a normal family life. You know, the kind where you’ve fucked two thirds of the people you’re sitting on the couch with. Which, by the way is not addressed in any way. If I found out that somebody I knew blew my boyfriend, you better believe we would have a talk about that.

Interesting sidebar: that is the only scene in the whole entire movie with a dad in it. Doesn’t it look like the just pulled another couch into the frame and made the sound guy sit there like decoration?

Other stuff happens. Sandra Bernhard does probably the best acting job in the entire film as cool guy’s therapist. But she’s always good…. in acting roles. In person to person interviews I find her too fancy.


No, you’re too fancy.
Oh imaginary Sandra, you always know just what to say.

Moving on. After therapy, cool guy’s cool guy friend starts talking shit on his new thruple, and it gets mighty real.


Shut up, bro. These people touched my dick and now they’re my very best friends so fuck off.

Later that day, hottie invites cool guy to their supporting cast friend’s house to ‘play dress up’ with her and gay nerd. You know, as many characters as it takes for you to text him that, you could have also said something along the lines of “my bff blew u. wats up” or even “u gay?” How about “Is there anything you’d like to tell me? Perhaps that my best friend has tasted your penis. Care to explain? I’d like to converse with you on this.” She looks like a girl with unlimited texts.


Awkward: party of three.

Of course, since teens are so good at drinking, they are extra good at threesome-ing.


The words “I want you to be my first” are actually spoken. I’ll just leave that there.

This is the face you make when your boyfriend and your best friend are making out, literally on your back. It’s also the face I made for most of this film.

After no actual threesome-ing, and a fairly large amount of drama for all involved, cool guy confesses his desire for all of them to ‘be together’ in the most stilted, halting way possible. And before he can actually articulate anything beyond that, it’s time to end this threesome scene in the way every teen sexual experiment should end: vomit!


And they just stare at him.

Anyway, dramatic cut to black.

Which has an almost hilariously long wait before… dramatic cut to brunch!

In which we learn that school’s over, hot girl’s plans to defer college in order to try and be an actress in New York have been parent negotiated back down to Penn State (boy is she going to be sad when her degree means about as much as a cum stained basement shower stall), school is over, the BFFs haven’t talked to each other since somebody’s first time turned into panic induced vomiting, and there’s rumors that cool guy’s in mental institution. They don’t seem too bothered the fact that they may have co-fucked a man to his mental breaking point.

Seriously, what happens after that last cut to black, do they all just run into the woods or something? Using poor communication skills in order to create dramatic tension is such an overused trope.

Don’t worry, it’s almost over.

Hottie’s mom makes her go feed the meter, and while she’s out there she sees cool guy walking away. After a Hitchcock style chase around a couple of corners, they’re back in front of her mom’s car (not really, but wouldn’t that be hilarious?) where they exchange a terribly awkward greeting and cool guy walks into the building hottie chased him around just as someone else comes out.

A close up on the door reveals:


Dun. Duh. DUNNNNNN!

All the dick touching and almost dick touching tormented the poor jock so much he went off the deep end and joined a community theater. There but for the grace of God….

Then the guy who came out of the theater when cool guy walked in asks the hottie if she’s in the chorus. She says no, and then he says “Then who are you supposed to be?”

DRAMATIC CUT TO BLACK.

Seriously, fuck this movie.

No, really. I loved this film for being so perfectly bad. After the last Bad Movie Theater I rented the other movie the two leads fucked in as well, but there were, like, three jokes I could make about the whole entire thing. Sadly, it was just regular bad. Movies like Be Back Soon and Dare are a special breed of bad that are basically set up, set up, set up and you provide the jokes. It’s an interactive experience, weather the film makers know it or not. And like a wild rose blooming in a crime scene, it’s beautiful and rare. I watch a lot of shitty films, but only a few are special enough to be Bad Movie Theater. Thank you Dare, for giving this gift to me.