Porky’s

Porky’s may have been the one that started it all, at least as far as gross-out teen comedies are concerned, but watching it now some two decades and change later it’s obvious that it’s aged like most of us do – not very gracefully.

Any discussion about teen comedies, at least of the modern variety, begins with sex – or at least the male pursuit of it. For a group of Florida teenagers, they’ve been burdened with physical inadequacies and, for one, the name of Pee Wee (Dan Monahan). Still, they persevere. Anyone who stands in their way of sex will feel their wrath.

Porky (Chuck Mitchell) owns a bar aptly named Porky’s where rumor has it the waitresses are on the easy side. When our gang of heroes are embarrassed by said Porky, they set out to take revenge ’cause they want sex and they won’t let any biker wannabe and his drunken lackeys stand in their way. Underdogs they are, but these boys are determined to prove their manhood so watch out.

Set in the 1950’s, Porky’s takes a nostalgic approach. It’s almost as though director Bob Clark (whose resume ranges from the all-time classic in A Christmas Story to the awful with Loose Cannons) wanted to make a film about what was really happening in American Graffiti. Boys and girls aren’t just driving around in their monster Chevys on Friday night. And what they’re doing (or trying to do) is a lot more than just kissing.

But by distancing itself from the present, Porky’s avoids further controversy because it isn’t in the present. Also, by setting it in the 1950’s, a good part of Clark’s audience are going to be those who grew up during this period when things life didn’t revolve around Mom serving milk and cookies to teenage football players wearing letterman jackets and Dad reading the sports section while sucking away on his best pipe. So if there was to be any outrage from the adults in the audience, then Clark could simply point to their own past and ask if they relate to any of the events.

Here’s a little tidbit that shows how well Canuck cinema is received in the United States. Until Mambo Italiano was released in 2003, Porky’s was Canada’s highest grossing film stateside. Who cares about Denys Arcand, Robert Lepage or Atom Egoyan, amongst others? Sex sells, even when it’s Canadian.

Porky’s has not aged well. In this age where teenagers can have simulate sex on screen with an apple pie or Tom Green can go suckling on a cow’s teat, a little gratuitous nudity and sexual dialogue is no longer shocking. So with the shock factor negated by time, it’s up to the story to carry it through. Sadly, it falls flat there as well. Porky’s is in large part a series of connected vignettes that all aim to accomplish one thing and that’s mention or imply sex as much as possible. The plot is far too thin and the characters are far too one dimensional.

While Porky’s may have spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of imitators, it’s having trouble keeping up with the barriers it broke more than two decades ago.