The Most Fun I’ve Ever Had With My Pants On | AFI Fest 2012 Review

The Most Fun You’ll Have With Tedium: Denny’s Debut Neither Lives Up To It’s Teasing Title or Promising Premise

Using the recent death of her father as inspiration for her feature film debut, Drew Denny combines female bonding comedy with a road trip film, all built upon a loopy elegiac base for her dead father, which is supposedly driving the narrative forward. Ironically, the over lengthy and twee title of The Most Fun I’ve Ever Had With My Pants On is only the first clue that this threadbare material would have been better served as a short feature, running ashore quiet early on as it clunkily attempts to explore the notion of finding comedy, or the joy of living, despite life’s heartbreak and tears. But one gets the sense that this opaquely rendered exercise would be most enjoyed by the friends and relatives of the Denny family.

Andy (Drew Denny) and Liv (Sarah Hagan) have reunited to keep a promise made to Andy’s recently deceased father, that being to spread his ashes across the Southwest United States. Seemingly estranged in their adult lives, they were apparently quite close, at least over a decade ago, when in high school. Andy was the rebel wild child, now owly lesbian, the perfect juxtaposition to Sarah, the consummate good girl who is more preoccupied with an audition for a role as a noir femme fatale in an Austin based film (luckily Texas seems to be the final stop on their trek, which will also reunite Andy with her distant mother). So, along the way, they share vague, distant memories from high school, like Liv remembering when Andy and her parents went to see the toppling of the Berlin wall, current relationship struggles, and notions of good girl vs. bad girl activities (so, random car hook-ups and gas station shoplifting fuel the saggy middle section). And then, while the two ladies rehearse for Liv’s audition one night in a seedy hotel room, their sexual tension makes for an awkward situation that results in the friends splitting up for a small portion of the trip. This creates time for Andy to set up a projector and show us a video of her dead father against the backdrop of a sand dune. Getting back together in Texas, right in the nick of time, Liv helps Andy rehearse for her confrontation with her mother.

The title of the film is derived from a quote by Andy’s father, a war veteran that remarked to his daughter that killing someone was the most fun he’d ever had with his pants on. Denny seems staunchly committed to showing us that a dark underbelly of sadness and pain may reside right under our noses, but that doesn’t mean life’s not worth living. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with her motif, it’s just the obviousness with which it’s presented. Worse, the characters of Liv and Andy are woefully underdeveloped, and why we’re supposed to have the remotest empathy for either of them is completely absent from the proceedings.

Sarah Hagan, last seen in Clay Jeter’s 2011 film Jess+Moss (Jeter also appears in small role here), is particularly irritating, her nasally little girl voice dropping overly rehearsed lines on us like lead rain. Denny, a likeable enough presence on screen, also sings several of the folksy songs on the soundtrack, and it’s clear she’s not without ambition and talent. But this perilously bland ode to her father does her no justice. The film’s strongest asset is some stunning landscape lushly caught by some beautiful cinematography as the duo mozies through deserts and arid areas, here provided by Will Basanta, who Jeter also used as DP on his film. The most fun you’ll ever have with your pants on will not, in most probability, happen while watching Drew Denny’s feature debut.

Reviewed on November 4th at the 2012 AFI Film Festival – Breakthrough Programme.
95 Mins