Here we have what may well be the most cataclysmic flop of the aughts, a film whose failure didn’t just lose its parent studio a lot of money: it took down an entire genre. THE REAL CANCUN, released on April 25, 2003, was an inaugural entry in the reality film genre, which sought to do for feature filmmaking what reality TV did for television.
THE REAL CANCUN (2003) Trailer
Filmed in eight days, edited in 2½ weeks and making its theatrical bow a month later, THE REAL CANCUN was produced by Jonathan Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, of MTV’s THE REAL WORLD, and directed by that program’s stock helmer Rick De Oliveira. Initially titled THE REAL SPRING BREAK, it documented the “real” Spring Break exploits of 16 good looking twentysomethings (culled from various college campuses).
It was, in short, a concise distillation of everything wrong with post-millennial Hollywood, being cynical, underachieving and contemptuous of both its cast members (who Murray claimed were “essentially exploiting themselves”) and its audience. The fact that it was New Line Cinema—which had previously released the 1969 Brazilian fantasy MACUNAIMA under the title JUNGLE FREAKS and the 1974 French art film VASE DE NOCES as THE PIG FUCKING MOVIE—that ended up pulling this particular trigger should surprise no-one.
THE REAL CANCUN serves as, essentially, a feature-length commercial for Cancun. Whenever one of its cast members has an especially good time he or she invariably shouts “Cancun!!!” Other than that, it’s a wash-out, with events following a very predictable course: we see the principals drinking and hooking up (always wrapping themselves in blankets whenever they have sex), with an uptight nerd (the Texas based Alan Taylor, who apparently had a girlfriend back home) learning to let loose and have fun. Lots of (then) hip music is played, of course, and it all adds up to very, very little.
Demonstrating the absurdly high expectations the industry had for the film, its cast was feted by a talk show host who urged them to prepare themselves for the monster success that was sure to ensue, and it was given a glitzy premiere at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre (complete with a red carpet covered in Cancun-esque white sand). As the LOS ANGELES TIMES film critic Patrick Goldstein proclaimed, “If the movie hits box office paydirt, it could cause a seismic shift in the ways teen movies are made, just as the runaway success of AMERICAN IDOL and SURVIVOR has revolutionized the look—and economics—of network television.”
Goldstein was among the film’s most ardent supporters, yet even he couldn’t help but temper his praise: “I found myself being far more forgiving of the CANCUN cast’s dumb antics and hapless philosophizing because…I knew the movie hadn’t been scripted by a hack screenwriter or homogenized by middle-brow studio notes.” An anonymous VARIETY quoted “indusrtyite” offered a far more succinct summation of the film’s core issues: “Things got a little out of whack, because there was so much industry interest in the picture (even as) the audience was deciding not to go see it.”
The film’s major antecedent was JACKASS: THE MOVIE (2002). As with THE REAL CANCUN, that pic originated with MTV, for which JACKASS was a massive success as both a TV series and a movie. The idea of replicating that success was apparently so seductive Universal tried it with a film called THE QUEST. Produced by Mike Fleiss, of THE BACHELOR and its spin-offs, THE QUEST once again involved young airheads on Spring Break, this time in Cabo San Lucas, and was supposed to be released around the same time as THE REAL CANCUN. As it happened, the latter’s inert financial showing ensured that THE QUEST ended up going straight to DVD in 2006.
A similar fate befell the British made JACKASS wannabe DIRTY SANCHEZ, which likewise took until 2006 to be granted straight-to-DVD distribution in the US. There was also FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY, a Spring Break set musical starring AMERICAN IDOL winners Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini; it at least was scripted, although its June 2003 release wasn’t much more profitable than that of THE REAL CANCUN.
We can be thankful, at least, that the film’s failure curtailed the theatrical bow of the aforementioned QUEST, and prevented quite a few in-the-works reality films from making it into production. Included in that line-up was something called THE BACHELOR PARTY, described as “a reality-based film on raucous pre-wedding nights,” and an MGM shepherded movie based on the GIRLS GONE WILD video series, about which I think the late Sam Goldwyn said it best: “Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay home and see bad TV for nothing?”