With 2010’s The Virginity Hit, we get a more technologically savvy teen take on The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Four high school buddies make a pact: whenever one of them gets laid for the first time, they’ll celebrate with a “virginity hit” on a ceremonial bong.

This occurs three times until only Matt (Matt Bennett) still needs to lose his cherry. He appears ready to do this with his girlfriend Nicole (Nicole Weaver) and his best pal Zack (Zack Pearlman) decides to create a video document of all the steps along the way.

The plan goes awry when Matt hears a rumor that Nicole cheated at a college party. Initially he plans to call off the date, but his friends insist that he go through with it – and add a twist. When Matt and Nicole come back to the hotel, they’ll do it and he’ll dump her as soon as they finish – all of which Zack and the boys will capture on video.

Inevitably, this also flops. Matt gets sick and can’t follow through with the sexual demands. He and Nicole officially break up, which inadvertently leads to attention from a hot older woman named Becca (Savannah Welch) after Zack posts the video footage online. This takes us down a variety of paths as Matt tries to lose his virginity.

A variety of really slow paths. When I recently watched The Social Network, I noticed how quickly the movie flew by; when I was a good 40 minutes into the flick, I though only about 15-20 minutes had passed.

No such pleasant surprise occurred during Hit; indeed, the opposite reaction took place. I figured the 90-minute movie had to be half-finished when I checked the timer on my player; instead, it turned out that only 11 - 11! - minutes had elapsed!

That’s what we call a “bad sign”, and the pace never picked up as the flick progressed. Perhaps it’s too much to expect a coherent narrative from something as high concept as this. After all, it’s supposed to provide footage shot by a teen who follows his buddy’s quest for sex, so it’s not like it comes with a clear-cut narrative. Indeed, one could argue that a tighter, more coherent take wouldn’t make sense within the movie’s cinéma vérité concept.

I don’t have a problem with the looseness of the story, but I do take issue with the general nothingness on display here. Much of the movie passes without a whole lot to potentially make it interesting. Again, perhaps this exists as an intentional simulation of actual user-shot online videos, and maybe it’s even intended to spoof the self-involvement of the “Youtube Generation”.

But I don’t think so. Instead, I believe Hit wants to be a 21st century American Pie, though with the twist that its filmmaking techniques brings. Like Pie, the movie sprinkles its attempts at heartfelt material with gross-out segments. Unlike Pie, however, it produces nothing funny or memorable.

Pie worked because it had actual heart and some cleverness behind it. Hit, on the other hand, feels like a rip-off some teens created with their pals. It never presents interesting characters or any situations that threaten to provoke amusement.

Indeed, it often feels more like a teen melodrama than the sex comedy the trailers promise. Matt comes from a sad background, and it’s hard not to feel somewhat sorry for him as we see his pathetic relationship exploits. This also makes his friends seem cruel as they snicker at his misfortunes.

I’m not sure what audience members will laugh at the material on display here. Even if we lose the sadistic side of things, Hit just never offers anything funny, and the actors don’t threaten to bring life to the material. Bennett and Pearlman come across as a poor man’s Michael Cera and Jonah Hill. Actually, Bennett looks more like Pie’s Jason Biggs, but the movie clearly wants to give the lead actors a Cera/Hill vibe, and it doesn’t work. As much as I dislike Cera’s mumbly nerd act, at least he can deliver a line; Bennett and Pearlman have no idea what to do with themselves onscreen.

Hit lacks the heart to make it a good drama and it lacks the wit to turn it into a satisfying comedy. Instead, it simply presents a dull, slow-paced flick that fails to achieve even a vague sense of entertainment.

The Virginity Hit appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this single-sided, single-layered DVD; the image has been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. The nature of the project made it tough to give the visuals an objective rating, but a “C” felt right.

That’s because the image was extremely erratic. Sharpness was one of those up and down elements. Some shots provided pretty nice clarity, while others could be rough and ill-defined. I noticed no edge enhancement, but occasional examples of jagged edges and shimmering appeared. Source flaws remained absent; I saw some video artifacts in low-light scenes, but those were inevitable.

Given the videotape origins, colors tended to be bland. Some shots offered moderate vivacity, but most of the hues were fairly flat and drab. Along the same path, blacks tended to be somewhat wan, while shadows usually appeared a bit opaque and dense. All of this was to be expected given the origins of the piece, so I thought a “C” made sense.

The film’s Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack was more consistent, largely because it lacked much ambition. Occasional instances of stereo music appeared, and a few examples of mild environmental audio materialized from the front side speakers. These remained less than exciting, though, as they did little to utilize the spectrum. The mix opened things up in a mild way at best but didn’t do much.

Audio quality was acceptable. Music fared the best, as the songs and score showed fairly good vivacity. Effects were a minor component and seemed adequate. Speech tended to be erratic, as the source material meant the lines varied in intelligibility. Nonetheless, they usually appeared reasonably clear. Nothing exceptional occurred here, but the track fit with the movie.

When we shift to extras, we start with an audio commentary from writers/directors Andrew Gurland and Huck Botko and actors Zack Pearlman and Matt Bennett. All four sit together for this running, screen-specific look at cast and performances, aspects of the script/story and improvisation, sets and locations, shooting style, editing and structure, and many anecdotes from the set.

At times, the participants try too hard to make this a comedy track. For instance, they pretend that Zack's father "Dr. Pearlman" – apparently played by producer Owen Burke, who later throws in his own comments - participates and expresses mock horror at the events on screen. Those elements flop, and a cell call to actor Nicole Weaver goes nowhere, but we get a fair amount of good content. In spite of the looseness, the guys contribute a lot of useful material about the flick, so we find a surprisingly nice overview.

The next two components look at casting materials. Screen Test with Matt and Zack goes for six minutes, 50 seconds and covers a few scenes. It’s a surprisingly involved piece and interesting to see, though some commentary/perspective would be good; I’d like to know where in the casting process this came.

Zack’s Online Audition lasts one minute, 56 seconds. In it, Pearlman provides a monologue about “repressed memories” related to masturbating. It’s not particularly amusing, but it’s a decent archival addition to the set.

We get alternate readings via the Line-O-Rama. The collection goes for three minutes, 29 seconds and covers a lot of unused lines. We find this feature on a lot of comedy DVDs, and usually they’re fun, but this batch is forgettable; we just get a bunch of Zack’s riffs on the “I’m going to do for your virginity…” scene. Given that nothing in the final flick amuses, there’s no reason to believe the cut material would be worthwhile; the clips live down to expectations.

Finally, a featurette called Jersey Girl runs two minutes, 44 seconds. It shows us that while her co-stars went Hollywood, Nicole Weaver stayed at her TGI Friday’s job even after shooting the movie. Though it’s not especially fascinating, it’s vaguely interesting, and it’s always nice to see more of the adorable Weaver.

The disc opens with ads for Faster, Red Hill, Community, The Other Guys and Step Brothers. These also appear under Previews. No trailer for Hit shows up here.

With Will Ferrell and Adam McKay as producers, you might expect The Virginity Hit to provide good laughs. Nope – I can’t say that it even boasted a single minor chuckle. The movie just plods along and lacks any actual purpose or sense of entertainment value. The DVD gives us acceptable picture and audio along with a decent set of supplements. Skip this utterly forgettable teen comedy.