The Package is a 2018 comedy about a group of teenage friends who go on a spring break camping trip, only to have an unfortunate accident set off a race against time to save their friend’s most prized possession.
Yup. It’s exactly what you’re thinking. A penis. And perhaps not surprisingly, it’s not even the most raunchy director Jake Szymanski goes in this new comedy now streaming on Netflix. Sure, it’s not like it’s new. Young people going over-the-top in the name of being naughty is a cornerstone of the comedy genre, with a new slew of trendy, explicit titles crowding for attention. The Package works hard to be crude, but earns some genuine laughs along the way, even if it all wears a little thin before its climax (the first and only package-related joke, I promise.)
Sean Floyd (Daniel Doheny) is home from a stay in Germany, heading on a weekend camping trip with his best friends Donnie (Luke Spencer Roberts) and Jeremy (Eduardo Franco), thinking it’s going to be some time to reconnect with his bros. Unfortunately (or maybe not), Jeremy’s sister Becky (Geraldine Viswanathan) and her friend Sarah (Sadie Calvano), who briefly dated Donnie, are in on the fling. This is good news for Sean, who’s hoping – since she broke up with her boyfriend – he can work some magic and make a move on Becky. As the night closes in and the gang indulges in some heavy drinking and weed, things suddenly take a dark turn – as you’ve surely already guessed – when knife-crazy Jeremy accidently slices off his own, well, package. Now it’s a quest to find the dang thing and get both him and the, um, member to the hospital. Turns out, that’s not so easy.
One certainly can’t claim there’s any lack of ingenuity to The Package, the gross out comedy not quite so overt as one might expect, somehow making all the goofiness kinda feel authentic, even if it’s all played for shock and guffaws. The movie hinges on the time-tested plot device of miscommunication when a rescue team arrives and takes the wrong ice cooler, leaving a clock ticking before the thing goes bad and can’t get reattached. Hey, at least it’s not 90-minutes of nerdy guys trying to get laid. And I guess, really, the whole authenticity flies out the window as well.
So how much comedy potential lies in the loss, retrieval, and loss again of a penis? Well, enough for a while at least, the sheer absurdity and originality of it all giving it some momentum. This is isn’t Shakespeare, and yet it’s pretty impressive the lengths the films goes to in putting Jeremy’s lost possession in all kinds of mayhem. That said though, don’t feel like this is anything so creative it bends expectations. This is pretty much a one-note joke with some lively bits that give it a twist.
The cast does their best, with Doheny earning the most laughs, though when you somehow find a way to severe a penis and get a rattlesnake to bite it, leaving the gang to think that, well, you know … venom and sucking, there’s only so much we can take. This is the heights The Package aims for and of course, it sputters more than it soars. Admittedly, there’s some solid chuckles but it’s just not sustainable and ultimately, it just gets limp. Okay, two jokes.