100 Girls review

Writer and director Michael Davis has learned and mastered the art of feminist sex comedies, a genre he may not even be aware that he has helped to cultivate. Each of the films that Davis has written and directed have an underlying message that actually follows very closely to the true definition of feminism, but he always includes a character that believes the exact opposite. This character is usually the tool for the sexual controversy. It may seem strange that a film containing offensive and demeaning material can also have a message that enforces another point entirely, but this is what Davis does best.

Eight Days a Week was the first of these films, and possibly the best. It is a film that most definitely begins with lust, and as our character grows and matures, he no longer sees his object of desire as just a nice body. Davis has continued his shocking form of entertainment that disguises beliefs and themes in barrels of fun. This past year he made one of the best action films of the year (Shoot ‘Em Up), continuing to write and direct as he shifts genres, but the film that Davis made right after Eight Days a Week was still an interestingly sensitive sex comedy.

            100 Girls has a relatively sophomoric plot with a blackout that leaves a teenager with an impossible scenario. Matthew (Jonathan Tucker) just happens to be in the elevator of a girl’s college dorm during a blackout. He is in the elevator with a girl, and they talk, have sex, and it leaves Matthew longing for more after she mysteriously disappears. Determined to find her Matthew sets out on the mission of figuring out which girl it was out of the 100 suspects living in the dorm.

This is one of those strange films that become more relevant years after it was made when the cast has increased in celebrity status. Katherine Heigl and Jaime Pressly are both among the 100 girls, which is about as surprising as how sweet the film actually is. This is essentially a twisted sexual Cinderella that puts prince charming in a politically correct world where he has to play strip Foosball with Heigl in order to gain her feminist respect. It is a strange message, but I would argue a positive one, oddly not unlike Knocked Up, another surprising film to find the straight-laced Heigl in.