National Lampoon’s Pledge This!
PLOT:
When a dorm toilet explodes on the first day back to school, a group of misfit girlfriends are forced to leave their housing and search for a new home. They ultimately decide on pledging a sorority. However, not many sororities are normal at South Beach University. The girls decide to pledge the most popular and exclusive sorority at the university, Gamma Gamma, which is led by president Victoria English (Hilton).
While pledging the sorority, Victoria sends the girls to do a task: collect used condoms, while searching the park, the leader of the group Gloria bumps into Victoria’s boyfriend Derek (‘baby dick’ called by Victoria) and they become close. The only reason Victoria plans to let the freshmen pledge is to display diversity, which is a requirement for the “FHM Hottest Sorority In The Country” contest. From then on, Victoria declares war on the girls during “Hell Week” but ultimately lets them join, only to kick them out once they have won the contest. This angers the leader of the misfit freshmen, Gloria. Gloria decides to quite the sorority as do her friends. Derek and Gloria realize their feelings towards each other and seal it with a kiss.
Gloria’s ex-best friend, Kristen desperate for wanting to get into Gamma Gamma convinces Gloria to come back. Gloria and her friends come back but only to declare war on Victoria by sneaking into the Gamma Gamma house and stealing embarrassing photos and video footage of Victoria to show to everyone at the Gamma Gamma victory party. She also reveals to Victoria that she and Derek love each other and before kissing him says, “Pledge This!”. Victoria becomes embarrassed and eventually makes a public apology to the freshmen. The movie ends with a giant food fight at the Gamma Gamma party, and Victoria saying that she loved her cover of “FHM” so much she bought the magazine. Gloria becomes the president of Gamma Gamma the following year. And everyone is at peace.
REVIEW:
Look, there’s no reason to even waste the time reviewing this. You see Paris Hilton is the star (and producer) of this thing…that should be a red flag.
Hilton does nothing more than parade around the entire picture making all the men in the cast act as if she’s the hottest thing on the face of the earth, which is far from the case. In most of the scenes, she’s not even the hottest woman on-screen.
The plot of this this is not a bad one, but rather is brought down by bad directing and acting. It is as simple as that. For me, it was a bit formulaic. It was quite obvious that it was the mean girl sorority against the rejects.
The filmmakers are suing Paris for not promoting this mess. I wouldn’t be proud of this crap either, but apparently, they added nude scenes to the unrated DVD release (it was never released in theaters, as originally planned), and she didn’t care for them. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m a red-blooded, straight male, but I belive the nudity kept this thing at least slightly interesting.
OK, it comes down to this. National Lampoon has steadily gone down in their movies since the days of Chevy Chase’s Vacation franchise. Van Wilder has been the only redeeming flick that has been released (that comes to mind) since then. Pledge This! is an insult to one’s intelligence. I can’t belive I sat through this entire thing. Having said that, it wasn’t as bad as Ghost in a Teeny Bikini, but its close. With every fiber of my being, I have to implore you to stay away from this flick. Unless you’re a fan of Paris Hilton, there really is no reason to waste 90 minutes of your life that you’ll never get back!
1 out of 5 stars
