Share Your Shame: Eurotrip (2004)

I studied film for two years. I watched foreign cinema, learnt techniques; I can tell you the history of British horror and give an academic argument into my hatred of Fight Club, but there is a shameful, shameful secret hiding in amongst the pretentious snobbery of my film collection. I like comedy. When I say comedy, I don’t mean acceptable comedy like Monty Python or obscure French comedy à la A Town Called Panic, I mean Eurotrip.

Eurotrip (2004) was once the most terrible mistake of director Jeff Schaffer, before producing Bruno and The Dictator became his most heinous crimes. It’s tells the story of Scott on a trip with his best friend to find his one true love, Mieke, in Berlin. It’s full of nudity, crude sex jokes, xenophobia, sexism and spelling mistakes; has next to no plot, and the plot that is there is predictable from the opening credits. It is shamefully and inexcusably bad.

I first watched this film when I was about 15, I instantly fell in love with Scott Mechlowicz, who plays the protagonist. It’s not that he’s the most attractive man in the world (sorry Scott), but at 15 you’ll take the most attractive thing out of any movie and fantasise for weeks. After procuring the film through a liberal adult I watched it so much on DVD it wore thin, quoting the film, watching bits again and again. Then I grew up and moved on, until I rediscovered it a couple of years ago. To my dismay I discovered that it still pulls me in, like an ex that you can’t quite let go of.

So why do I love it so? Well, its badness makes it easy to watch, and after a long day I don’t want to follow a string of expertly weaved plots, I just want to watch an A to B to C oh-look-we’re-almost-back-at-A-but-things-are-happier. I want to laugh at crass ridiculousness and just watch something so terrible and badly made that in the DVD commentary they eat pizza and get drunk. It’s a form of relaxation more productive than lying on a sofa for 90minutes doing nothing, and more socially acceptable than staring at the ceiling in a Zen like state. Besides, sometimes, just sometimes, I want to watch someone kick a French robot in the balls. Is that really so wrong.

Heidi Murphy