Our final film of the seven we saw as part of the 29th Israel Film Festival was Ibiza which was…well, it’s basically an ’80s teen sex comedy. It’s about three post-service buddies: the smart, charming surfer dude; the nebbishy one with a hot girlfriend he desperately wants to cheat on; and the fat, gross, nerdy one who pines for the hot chick. (Ibiza itself is sort of a Mediterranean version of Fort Lauderdale in perpetual Spring Break mode, apparently.)

I don’t even need to tell you who’s who, do I?

The surfer dude, through his irresponsibility, gets his younger brother hurt in a surfing accident, and the surgery to fix is going to be expensive. He’s sworn off surfing, but goes for a championship on the hopes of winning money for the surgery. (He wins, but the championship offers no money, apparently.)

Because it’s an Israeli flick, he talks to God a lot and asks for signs, and his friends convince him that the site of a major party simultaneously hosting a big surfing competition with a prize of a 4kg gold brick (what?) is a sign from God that they should all go to Ibiza. This is another low budget film but since I’ve never been to Ibiza I have no idea if they actually went there or just used B-roll. Everyone had the same Israeli accents when speaking English, though (which they do a lot in the second half of the movie).

He looks like Robert Hays in Airplane! just as Hays looked at the camera and said “Ain’t that a pisser?”

This movie hits on every trope of the ’80s teen sex romp: The disapproving father, the drug-induced hallucination (although this has a Hangover feel to it), the surfing competition against the snooty guy, the run-in with the prostitute, the run-in with the mobsters, the really hot chick (frighteningly thin model Dar Zozovski) who is into the homely fat guy (Maayan Bloom), the doofus ungrateful for the hot rich girlfriend who adores him, the requiem for the conservative father who can’t relax…

The only things that seemed influenced by modern comedies was a sort of What About Mary gross out semen scene, the aforementioned Hangover influenced hallucination scene, and the loser-fat-guy’s-slutty-mom trope. This trope actually does go back to the ’80s, at least, but this movie made it more…graphic.

It’s not unpleasant, or at least not any more so than your average raunchy comedy these days (which is to say: it’s a little unpleasant at times). But it’s positively weird in how all of these tropes are hit, often in rapid fire, often with little to no narrative support. Like, when Zozovski, by way of explaining her attraction to Bloom says, “I feel like I can really be myself around you,” not only have we seen no indication of this, the only interactions the two have had seem downright awkward.

Overall, an odd film. Bordering on “porridge”, perhaps, The Boy and I felt.

Nerdy guy can’t settle down with her.