Foreign Exchange (2008)

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

"Foreign Exchange" (2008) is a high school comedy in the manner of 1999's "American Pie," but with a lower budget. I'm not a fan of "American Pie" or 2001's "Not Another Teen Movie" simply because they're too raunchy for my tastes; but that's just me. "Foreign Exchange" has quite a bit of raunch too and, in fact, begins with a scene of a teen masturbating in bed, but it's arguably not as bad as those other movies on this front.While all these films exaggerate the teen years for comedic purposes, do they - generally speaking - reflect real life? The answer is yes, which is WHY they're funny. For instance, do many teen dudes masturbate in bed to a photo of a babe? Of course. Now, this isn't likely something you want to SEE, but the film's making light of those fun-but-awkward teen years. Furthermore, despite a brief scene of three girls flashing their breasts, the sleaze is all talk or, at best, implied. And isn't that also the way it is in high school, except for the neighborhood Fonz (i.e ultra-cool guy who gets all the babes)? Jay (Randy Wayne) fits this description in the film and, less so, Shantz (Daniel Booko). And then there's the hardaxx principal of the school. I had one of those - a former Marine who always rolled his short sleeves up to show off his muscles & Marine Corps Emblem tattoo - albeit in the movie it's a woman, Jennifer Coolidge, and she's genuinely funny. And then there's the stoner smart kid, Hashbrown (Miles Thompson) and quite a few pot-smoking scenes. Again, these things reflect the real-life high school years.While "Foreign Exchange" is clearly low-budget it's also obvious that the filmmakers took care to create memorable characters with excellent casting. The film also does well on the female front with precious Vanessa Lengies as Robyn leading the way. I say "precious" because she's a hugely likable character that you care about, like Dave does (Ryan Pinkston), particularly as the story develops. Ashley Edner is also on hand as the beautiful Jez. Tania Raymonde as Anita, the Brazilian exchange student, is the main female protagonist, along with Robyn, but she's too thin to trip my trigger. I also like the way the shining Asian girl, Mia Ho (Jessika Van), ultimately finds companionship despite being made out to be discard-able. It's elements like this that reveal the movie's warmth below the raunchy garnish. The second half starts to mark time, however, so I can't give it a higher rating.The film runs 85 minutes and was shot in Los Angeles.GRADE: B-

Four high school friends plan to ride out their senior year taking easy classes, including a program for housing foreign exchange students and eventually all attending Ohio State. Hurdles befall each of the four: grades, higher aspirations, love. Is it the Foreign Exchange students that learn from their host or the hosts that do more of the learning?Will you care after the titles?I didn't. It's sort of an American Pie ripoff without the heart.The only positive thing I can say is that the ids are actually marginally passable as HS seniors. They don't look 30 like other movies

This movie was decent. I wouldn't watch it again, but to pass time it's cool. There was some really corny stuff in which it was actually HARD to watch without wanting to mute, but I got through it.It's a pretty typical movie, but it was fairly entertaining. But like others said, very typical. (spoiler coming up) The "playa" ends up with the girl hating on him and the shy dude gets the girl.I might have laughed a few times, can't really remember that. But I did smile.I like high school setting movies revolving around friends. So I liked it for that matter, but nothing stood out really. I think the idea was cool "exchange students", just it wasn't a good "comedy", "romance", "drama" or what ever genre the movie was attempting to be. It wasn't bad, just not good.

I want my 80 minutes of life back, this movie tried so hard to be American Pie and pretty much every teen/sex/stoner comedy and ends up failing hard with a lot of unfunny, recycled/stolen jokes. Yes a guy shaves his pubes and suffers the consequences, just like in American Pie. Yes that's how awful it gets with blatantly trying to be other movies.The characters were even worse, so blatantly ripped off and supposed to be teenagers but played by a bunch of 20-something year old nobodies who are still trying to get their careers started. There's the womanizing wild jock (gee sound familiar?) The innocent virgin guy waiting for the right one, the weird dad offering awkward sex advice to his son, the wild guy who wants to change for the right girl, the hot sex-crazed foreign exchange student, the stoner guy, etc etc. I think you already know where this is going.I liked American Pie, 40 year old virgin, etc, I wasn't expecting a huge epic plot or anything, just to have a couple laughs, but I can't laugh at ripped off jokes and characters when it wasn't even a parody movie, and I can't even criticize it anymore because I've addressed pretty much everything and don't even think it deserves another paragraph. Don't even bother renting it.