A Movie That Sends Mixed Signals

Your warning is deeply appreciated, and hardly the first that I've read regarding this feature. Banal faux found footage gimmickry aside, it's a cute twist on a premise that was beaten to death in the '80s and resurrected many times thereafter. As its trailers and so many reviews indicate, nothing here hasn't been executed more skillfully in teen comedies that featured better music, photography, dialogue and performances without so much douche-chilling social media exploitation.

However, your moral objections to this movie are baffling to me. Were my teenage years confined solely to dorky pastimes and intellectual pursuits without a copious supplement of parties, sex and drugs, I'd have come away from them a far less storied individual. If anything is likely to negate fun in a teen comedy, it's responsible behavior and didactic themes of either development or subtext. These assure the death of fun. I don't doubt that this is trite, unfunny and absurdly overhyped, but to expect fare of this genre to assert a moral position is counterproductive, especially during a sanitized era years after far more explicit and entertaining equivalents were enjoyed by audiences.

Parents are tasked to instruct. Filmmakers have no such obligations.

This seems to be a portrayal of the kind of teenagers that I hate. I being a teenager myself at the moment cannot relate to any of this; I don't attend parties, because I'm the quieter type, and I hate the douche-bags that seem to inhabit this film.