SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Aiden Melton
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
Hattie
I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
Michael Ledo
Adam Clay (Sam Huntington) is a freshman at college whose goal is to score. His goal becomes Amanda (Kaitlin Doubleday). Amanda belongs to a wicked sorority. Her initiation task is to find a gay male and break his heart. Adam pretends he is gay to get close to Amanda. Neither knows the truth about each other.Adam pretending to be gay is the main humor of the film. The film had a number of humorous moments and overall I enjoyed it in spite of none of the characters being real or done particularly well, other than John Goodman playing a gay bar tender.A similar film is "Chicks Dig Gay Guys" although it is not one I recommend.Guide: F-bomb, sex, nudity (3 uncredited)
moonmonday
This is one I always kind of hesitated to watch and ended up finding reasons not to sit down and just watch it. But when I finally did...wow. I wish I hadn't.Freshman Orientation (the better of the two titles it was best known as) is one of those movies that you watch and you can see that there were some good ideas and maybe even some good intentions in there, but literally none of them is even remotely well-realized in the resulting movie. While there may be points later where it seems to pay off, it takes too long to get there, doesn't make up for the time wasted, and really isn't worth the extremely unpleasant journey.It takes every opportunity to toss out offensive epithets, unfunny attempts at gutter humor, and caricatures that the main audience probably wouldn't recognize. If you do recognize the characters they're supposed to be...you'll be offended at how poorly they're done. There's so much comedic potential here, it's just never brought to a point where it's funny. It could have been a fantastic satire and commentary on these types of people we all know and have met, but it failed in every respect.And while I'm not saying low-brow gutter jokes are inappropriate -- college frat settings are perfect for that -- it takes a special kind of failure to fail at that kind of humor. How can you miss on that? Gutter humor is made to amuse the lowest common denominator!The whole affair is so abominably poorly-done that it's really hard to figure out who you're supposed to care about, as the audience. All of the characters are horrible, stupid, or in some way completely unsympathetic. They seem to be going out of their way at every moment to be hard to like. At no point will you ever think "that character seems like somebody I'd like to be friends with" unless you are a psychopath.When you get down to it, perhaps the largest and greatest problem this movie suffers from is that it has no audience. If you're a fan of "fun frat" style movies, you'll have no fun at all with this movie. If you're gay or lesbian, you'll find this movie unpleasantly ugly and offensive, as well as annoyingly smug and self-satisfied, with no reason for it to be. Audiences that are here for fraternity silliness and boobs (which the film does provide) won't want to experience the piled-on homophobia and hate, and they won't recognize most of the cartoonish caricatures. Audiences familiar with the hardship of being gay and out probably won't find any entertainment in experiencing one unpleasantness after another related to it that strike a little too close to home, without any real comedy that manages to work balancing it out.Anyone else will find it difficult to watch, much less enjoy, a film that has zero likable characters, zero jokes that actually work, and zero fun. Please, watch something else. You will regret the time you spent in this horrible abomination that wastes what few decent actors it gets on something that I can't imagine they were too proud to put in their portfolio.
jfgibson73
Freshmen Orientation is a comedy about a guy who pretends he is gay to get closer to a girl he likes. She is going out with him to fulfill a sorority pledge challenge in which inductees have to date some sort of "freak" and then dump them to purposely be hurtful. The movie tries to get political when the main character starts attending support meetings for gay and lesbian students. We see plenty of stereotypes, none more pronounced than the militant activist lesbians who are ready to rally a protest at the drop of a hat. In the end, both characters admit they were being deceitful and they end up together after a heartfelt talk on a park bench.It wasn't so much that the acting was terrible, it was just that the script make the actors sound bad no matter how they delivered their lines. I liked the actress who was in charge of the sorority (she played Suzane Somers in a Three's Company t.v. movie that I really liked), and I kind of liked the ex-girlfriend who was now lesbian (the only likable character in the movie). The guy playing the lead is hopeless--you just can't expect someone with that little ability to carry an entire film.I think most people would agree that the images of gay and lesbian students in this movie are more damaging than progressive, even though I get the sense that there might have been good intentions behind the making of the film. Even though it tries to treat some of the characters with empathy and respect (the roommate, the ex), it just doesn't work in a crude sex comedy that appears to be marketed to horny high school boys. I hated it.
Roland E. Zwick
A fair-to-middling low-budget comedy, "Freshman Orientation" has some good-natured fun lampooning the stereotypes and clichés of college life. Kewpie-faced Clay Adams is an undergrad frat pledge who pretends to be gay in order to snag the girl of his dreams. Just how this paradoxical turn-of-events comes about need not be reiterated here. Suffice it to say that it involves fraternity and sorority initiation pranks that wind up at cross purposes with one another.Suffering from its own case of identity confusion, director Ryan Shiraki's screenplay reinforces stereotypes even as it's working hard to beat those stereotypes down. Gays, in particular, may find themselves evenly divided between encouragement and dismay over how they are portrayed in this film.Still, there are enough moments of loopy charm to make the film worth seeing on a slow, rainy afternoon, and Sam Huntington and Kaitlin Doubleday have appeal and charisma to spare as Clay and his girl. And, as an added bonus, they are joined by John Goodman and Rachel Dratch in minor supporting roles.
