Netflixable? Spring Breakers don’t know what to do with “The Package”

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Just a little spring break camping trip, that’s what teen bros Sean, Donnie and Jeremy have in mind.

Sean (Daniel Doheny) has been away at school in Germany. Donnie (Luke Spencer Roberts) “might” have been telling the whole town he was in rehab. And Jeremy, aka “Virgin Megastore” (Eduardo Franco) a fake ID and a switchblade he just found, “in case any s— goes down in the woods!”

What can go wrong?

In “The Package,” pretty much everything. Some of it, OK yeah, funny.

You’ve probably heard this, once titled “Eggplant Emoji,” is a raunchy teen comedy that’s one long penis joke. Because what happens, AFTER Jeremy’s sister (Geraldine Viswanathan) and her pal, Donnie’s ex Sarah (Sadie Calvano) crash their “bro’s only” trip, Donnie loads them up with beer and then gets drunk.

And drink teens with switchblades have accidents. A penis is lopped off. It’s amazing the stuff that can happen to a penis, in transit through the woods, toted about by short-attention-span idiots.

Rattle snake bike, dumped on the ground, dropped off a cliff, hauled in a stolen boat, cleaned by taxidermist Redneck Reginald (Mike Elkund, mohawked hilarity), all AFTER the injured party has been serenaded with “Oops, I Did it Again” all the way to the Medivac chopper.

The screw-ups have twelve hours to rescue this member. As the nurse (Mary Holland) keeps reassuring our patient, “It’s not looking good.” Give him some more “living without a penis” literature and hope the four friends can scramble down the mountain, bargain with an oversexed punk 11 year-old, etc. and make to the OR on time.

Director Jake Szymanski (“Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates”), working from a hit or mess script by Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider, keeps the film on its feet and moving — for the most part, a must for comedy. 

Need to signal a Medivac chopper in the dark? There’s a funny way to shoot and cut the desperate act of tossing a propane cylinder into the campfire (It’s going to go BOOM.) and Szymanski knows how to do it. He maintains the cliffhanger suspense with ease.

More than a couple of the penis mishaps are laugh-out-loud funny (wait for “Redneck Reginald and his psychotic girlfriend played by Sugar Lyn Beard). The foul-mouthed kid (Chance Hurstfield) is pin-your-ears back hilarious.

The young cast is uneven but game, with Doheny amusingly hapless, Viswanathan plucky, Calvano as rude as any jerk teen boy as and Spencer, a redhead with an attempted-mustache, a sort of Next Gen Clark Duke — arrogant and clueless.

Oh, and it’s not giving too much away to reveal the victim. It’s Jeremy.

“If this doesn’t work out, I’m gonna be your sister, Becky.”

“You’ve already got the hair for it.”

“The Package” is funnier than any one joke/”dick” joke comedy has any right to be.

2half-star6

MPAA Rating: TV:MA

Cast: Daniel Doheny, Geraldine Viswanathan, Sadie Calvano, Eduardo Franco, Luke Spencer Roberts, Sugar Lynn Beard, Blake Anderson

Credits:Directed by Jake Szymanski, script by  Kevin BurrowsMatt Mider. A Red Hour/Netflix  release.

Running time: 1:34

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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