IMDb Bottom 100 Review - Number 66 The Hillz

They let us have one shitty movie before throwing another Paris Hilton flick at us! Is there not decency left in this world? I needed more time to recover, you guys. There is never enough time. Paris brings nothing to the yard, and nobody wants to charge a dime even if she did. As before, a movie is somehow spun around her amazingly pointless presence, and we're left breathless as hunk of shit upon hunk of shit fly ceaselessly onto a fan and splatters over a wide area. It's safe to say, this movie did nothing to me. Nothing positive anyway. You may be bored to death just reading about it, but at least do your best with this review of...

Pretty standard preppy rich white boy douche. But he hits Paris Hilton squarely across the face, so there are redeeming points.

The Hillz (2004)

The Hillz? The Hillz. With a z? Yes. If nothing else, this should indicate just what level of consciousness this movie aspires to reach. Add in an infantile approach of guns, drugs and murder, with a sprinkle of Paris Hilton and a hissop of misogyny, and we can safely surmise the relatively basic fact, that this movie might appeal to teenage boys who may or may not believe themselves to be the next Jesse James Hollywood. It appears even, that this movie is a shittier version of Alpha Dog, albeit released two years before. Also it features Paris Hilton. So here's a question: Since Paris has 5 flicks on this Bottom 100 list (that I'm aware of. Lord knows she could sneak up in more) claiming she isn't exactly a bankable star would be a pretty safe assumption. Why then is she in these movies? She doesn't guarantee profits. She barely guarantees publicity, but these movies aren't marketed really, so she'd be the only publicity and let's face it guys, her name hasn't exactly been a Seal of Quality, has it? So why then? I don't know. It just is. Life goes on. Alright. I'm just saying. That's all.

Paris at a funeral. Yes, why the hell not. This seems perfectly normal. 

The movie opens with, what is very predictably, the closing scene. Our main character dude, Steve 5 (yes that's his real name, don't ask) narrates the following superb piece of dialogue: “They say your life flashes before your eyes when faced with death. When it happened to me, nothing came up, 'cause my life was pretty good”. Yes. That's what we start this shitfest off with. I guess whoever wrote this assumes that only bad things flash before your eyes when you're about to die. Anyway, Steve 5 and his 3 friends are typical teen crotchstains that spend their lives trying to score booze, disrespecting women and act tough in front of convenience stores. I wish this wasn't so close to how things are in real life. Perhaps this was meant as a criticism of the structure of society and how the political indifference most people feel creates throngs of disenfranchised youngsters looking to belong, ending up running rampant in the streets with access to guns and drugs? If it hadn't been for Paris Hilton, this would be my going thesis. Alas, I stray from the subject here. The first part of the flick is spent setting up the following premises: Steve is in love with Heather (Paris H-ton) and has been since he was still a twinkle in the milkman's eye. He is a goofy fuck up with stellar career in baseball ahead of him. His friends are major fuck ups and will end up ruining everything for him. And lastly, this movie will fail miserably at everything it sets out to accomplish.

Guy is pissed directly in the face for a full 30 seconds. Does not move. This makes less than zero sense. 

During a moment at a party, Steve and his friends are thrown out on the curb, and what appears to be campus security but is probably meant to be a cop, beats up one of Steve's friends. The cop's partner, a boy Steve used to go to school with who now interns at the police (that's a thing apparently) pisses on the friend's head. I don't know what cop or even a cop intern (?!) would do this in real life, but there we are. This does not go down well with Steve's buddies. So they end up killing the kid later on with a gun one of the guys found in a bathroom drawer at the party. Steve tries to sweet talk Paris Hilton into ditching her preppy asshole boyfriend for him, but she's all like “I need a man with a career” and then tells Steve to come back in one year and that she'll think of him.

Girl that is given a drug that makes her pass out. 3 dudes argue over who gets to hit that. It seems perfectly normal. 

A year later, Steve returns after winning the College World Series as a pitcher. Nothing has changed. His old friends are still morons trying to run a drug ring. Everybody are idiots. Yes, granted, people who run drug rings are probably idiots in real life too, but this shit is just ridiculous. Steve meets them randomly, and is all 'you guys are still the same? Shiiiit'. They somehow still convince him to join them for parties and what not. And of course shit escalates from there. Steve tries to hook up with Paris Hilton, who has apparently been thinking about him during the year, but she's pretty flaky. Nothing makes sense at this point. This review included. The plot is so basic, that a six year old with ADHD would be able to spot redundancy and holes in it. People start dying left and right. Including, and this is the kicker, the narrator. Or at least we're led to believe he is shot at the end. How the fuck he narrates a story after being dead I can't come up with a plausible explanation for. Perhaps it's a Bible Camp promo, and we are meant to believe he's now an angel talking sternly against drugs and premarital sex? It's not impossible. In fact, it's probably what it is. Yes. Bible Camp propaganda.

Steve 5 doesn't give a shit anymore. He has everything to lose, but doesn't understand what that means. Like the words. 

I was bored watching this. Majorly bored. One guy in here turns in a somewhat decent performance, but only because he needs to shout obscenities a lot and act like a mental patient. Who can't do that? The rest are just watered down Paris Hiltons. And Paris herself is a watered down version of them. It's like she's actively trying not to appear natural. Or perhaps she is a character actor, and this is her finest hour? I'm genuinely curious to hear her own thoughts of these movies. Were they fun? Did they pay well? What? What the fuck went wrong? There isn't a single believable character involved in this movie. The story? Not really believable, but then again, Alpha Dog seemed super loco too, and I'm led to believe that was based on actual events. If The Hillz were based on actual events, I'm done with this world.

She was playing tennis her boyfriend. He said good match. She said something and he punched her right in the kisser. I didn't understand why this happened, but the imagery is too good to leave out. 

Unsurprising this movie is the first for director Saran Barnun. So often the way, is it not? He wrote this, thought 'Yes! I've got it!' and somehow sold enough blood to actually get it made. I'm impressed with that. Not with the result per se, but at least he got something done. It always boggles my mind how that is something that happens. How it came to him, I can't tell you. But here's an idea: He just gave a bunch of morons some prop guns, and told them to shout fuck a lot. Then Paris Hilton. Aaaand scene! You see, the plot is wafer thin, that's no surprise. The dialogue is perhaps, if possible, even thinner. Most characters make contradicting statements, sometimes even in the same scene. Did I mention Paris Hilton is in this movie? Well she is. In Nine Lives they at least had the god damn decency to kill her off as the first one. Here she stays for the whole nine yards, and she is in a lot more scenes than she ought to be. And she's always nearly naked, for comedic effect I guess. Even at a funeral. Yes, there is a funeral, and it's such a god damn ridiculous scene, that even for this very subpar flick, it ought to have been cut. Heavily. Or altogether.

Everybody is extremely fucking goofy looking. It doesn't lend credibility to the overall tone. 

All in all, this movie was a waste of time. Clocking in at a pretty standard 91 minutes, it's just not good enough. It went for gritty reality, I guess. It failed. It went for amusing dialogue. Failed. It went for deep characters with a wide emotional range. It failed. Epically. It failed at anything it tried to accomplish, unless it was looking to drive people out of their cinematic comfort zone. That went pretty well. The movie ends, besides the narrator getting fucking shot (complete with posthumous narration) with Steve's psycho gangster friend, the same psycho gangster friend, mind, that threatened Steve with violence if he didn't join them for murderous and drug-induced fun and games, telling Steve to live a full life with the gift he has that nobody else has (pitch a ball really fast over a plate (actual dialogue). So he's telling the guy, whose life he ruined, to not let people who ruin his life ruin his life, but live said life to the fullest because he's got a gift. That people who ruin his life haven't. So... I don't know, guys. It's pretty fucking meta at this point. Also a decent allegory of how we, the viewers, are supposed to feel about this movie, I think. What the actual fuck?

Finds gun in bathroom drawer. Immediately starts threatening self. This seems perfectly normal.