Pomp and raunchy circumstances

Imagine seeing a movie shot entirely in your room. For frequent visitors to Ocean City, Md., that's exactly what The Graduates, screening free Sunday at Hoff Theater in the Stamp Student Union at 7 p.m., is like.

At the very least, writer-director Ryan Gielen's (Larry Keel: A Beautiful Thing) ode to a group of high schoolers' senior week celebration should feel very familiar to anyone who has ever partaken in the fun (and trouble) Ocean City has to offer. And while the film may have its share of issues, it's tough to not be impressed by the very professional look Gielen and his team achieved on a slim $95,000 budget.

"Nobody is going to know when they see the finished product what the budget was," Gielen said.

The simple act of creating the film involved a lot of hustle from Gielen himself, who used an award-winning short film (Deleted Scenes) he co-wrote and directed to help convince investors to chip in with him for Graduates.

"It's still a very risky investment," Gielen said. "But I had a track record."

The film itself is not perfect, but to Gielen's credit, there is some evidence he had more in mind than a simple raunchy teen comedy. The movie begins with a crew of high school kids heading off for senior week, with most hoping to get laid. While that scenario is typical, what follows in the movie isn't.

"One of the things that I don't like about a lot of coming-of-age comedies is that they're really cynical," Gielen said. "The humor is offensive not because they say wrong things, but because they're so dumb."

Gielen added, "The comedy come[s] from human beings trying to interact with one another. ... I think that makes it a little smarter humor."

All this talk of intelligent humor may seem to contrast with a film featuring a kissing-while-puking sight gag. The movie, however, also has some effectively subdued scenes of dialogue more concerned with maturity and aging.

Those more adult themes and the low-key realism accompanying them call to mind a high school version of Sideways, and this influence is likely not a coincidence.

"[Sideways is] one of my favorite screenplays of all time," he said. "Probably every three or four months, I read the screenplay again."

On numerous levels, though, the maturity of Sideways is not consistently felt in Graduates. The core characters insist on a designated driver while drunk but later take Ecstasy for no particular reason.

There is no acknowledgment of the dangers of the drugs and the film is also overtly homophobic, with casual usage of a certain three-letter gay slur and characters who recoil at male intimacy.

While the film does feel real to an extent, certain problems hold it back. Practically all the female characters are sex-obsessed, which detracts from the film's believability. The only black characters in the film rap - enough said. And to make the lead character, Ben (Rob Bradford, One Life to Live), seem naive, he asks questions like, "Chicks have orgasms?"

But the performances, like the visuals, are very professional and would fit right into a studio picture. Most impressive is newcomer Nick Vergara as the strong-willed Mattie, whose rich voice and confident screen presence draw attention. But all the actors acquit themselves well and benefit from the script's distinctive, if somewhat archetypal, personalities.

Overall, while a mostly pleasant and familiar film, Graduates is neither a sharp enough comedy nor a sufficiently deep drama to function in the dramedy vein so effectively mined by Sideways. That being said, Gielen gets major respect for simply pulling off a practically studio-quality film with less than $100,000 in the first place.

The Graduates is screening at Hoff Theater on Sunday at 7 p.m. Gielen and two of the film's producers will stay for a Q&A after the screening. Admission is free.

dan.benamor@gmail.com