Porking Mandy is an uninhibited teen comedy written and directed by Jeremy Cordy. The plot revolves around an anti-prom party thrown by some high school students as a secondary option for prom night. When everyone hears that the newly single hottest girl in school, the titular Mandy, might show up, they turn up as well. She is the queen that they worship. Girls want to be in her presence. Boys want to have sex with her.
After watching this movie, it's evident that Cordy knows the formula of a teen comedy. All the appropriate beats, the rhythm, the pacing, all the right structural elements. I can see influences from classic teen movies such as Can't Hardly Wait, American Pie, Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The entire movie takes place in one night. The characters introduced at beginning of film and they're visually identifiable by their costumes. Then you get into the meat of the story and watch how these wacky personalities casually interact with each other.
This film is like a live action cartoon. There are some really weird characters in this goof show. A magician. A sad clown. A suave sexually driven swinger. A repulsive, troll-like twin sister. There are also characters that are caricaturistic of typical teenagers, the kind of people we all went to high school with. So, what's interesting about Porking Mandy is watching the absurd characters intermingle with mundane characters.
The humor in Porking Mandy rides on a slow rolling wagon of awkwardness. Moments between characters are stretched out to a point of absurdity. The sexual tension is cringeworthy. The dialogue is brash. The pacing in the middle of the movie drags, but there are still jokes to enjoy. There are delightful moments that surge with a surprise shock. Something absolutely obscene will happen, an incident outside of the teen movie formula. This is when Porking Mandy succeeds in being unique and incorporating unexpected qualities within a conventional film genre.
