The Road Trip That Became a Lesson — Revisiting Miss March Through People, Culture, and Chaos
To simply say that Miss March, released in 2009, stumbled would be an understatement. It was the target of tremendous cultural confusion and derisive reviews. Despite the promise of a “no-holds-barred” adventure comedy, the result, directed, written, and starred by Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know, was disappointing. Instead of the expected shameless buddy romp, the audience was presented with a desperate film that, cloaked in vile humor, sought to hide the makers’ creative ambition and personal anguish.
Nonetheless, the passage of time has been relatively gentle on Miss March. Working comedically with censorship, the absurd structures of fame, and the peculiarities of male insecurity, as this film sought to do, resonates in a surprising way with Indian society today. The same can be said about the conversations taking place.
When The Dream Became a Detour
The synopsis for Miss March sounds like a nostalgic take on classic American sex comedies. Eugene (Zach Cregger) is a timid young man who falls into a coma on prom night, just before he was supposed to lose his virginity, and wakes up four years later to discover that his high-school sweetheart, Cindi, is a Playboy centerfold.
Eugene then goes on a chaotic road trip to recapture Cindi with his best friend and Tucker (Trevor Moore) who is charming and disastrous. The film is centered around a cross-country wild chase and while it is filled with absurd accidents, awkward intimacy, and over-the-top antics, it also has a deep sense of fragility.
The confusion of waking up to a world that has changed dramatically while he hasn’t, has Eugene questing for lost time, lost innocence, and love. That particular feeling of having to return to life after everything familiar has moved on is one that transcends beyond Hollywood.
The associating of such a theme with emotional sentiments is common in India. Many people have experienced the sensation of waking up to a world that has changed, whether that be in the form of new technologies, new relationships, or new cultural norms. In the case of Miss March, the vulgar humor is a mask for the melancholia of the audience, of the realization that the people one loves can change in a manner that your memories of them just can’t keep up with.
The Comedians Who Wanted to Be Filmmakers
In the case of Miss March, it is equally important to understand the people behind it. Initially, Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore were sketch comedians, hailed for their bold and absurd comedic takes on taboo subjects. They were the creators of the shock humor show The Whitest Kids U’ Know, where the satire was chaotic and bold enough to express sentiments that polite society decidedly would not voice.
When Fox Searchlight provided them the opportunity to make a feature film, the duo considered it a platform to extend that humor. However, unlike sketch comedy, the art of film making demands certain pre-requisites like structure, tone, and patience, which the duo’s boundless energy was constantly in opposition with.
In productions as chaotic as this one, the impact of Trevor Moore’s passing in 2021 still resonates. His account of the shooting described the slipped expectations on the studio’s side, the migraines induced by endless rounds of editing, and the multiple divergent narratives surrounding tone, all of which formed a tangled mess and left the team with the sense of defeat imprinted in numerous interviews. He described the feature film as a protracted “sketch,” a form with which the team was intimately familiar, ultimately stating, “It’s like running a war.”
That exhaustion is palpable, which in part accounts for the fascination with Miss March. It was a film trying to find its footing, made by two comedians who were still ambivalent about their craft.
The Women, the Image, and the Idea of “Miss March”
While Miss March did center around a playmate, it is true that the film’s depiction of women was tone deaf. Critics seized upon it for insensitivity around stale and worn-out tropes, but Miss March was blanketing a critique. It is a film that, to many, appears to have a congratulatory stance.
Cindi, as played by Raquel Alessi, is not meant to be a naïve, dream girl. She is a woman that made a decision in a world that, to many, is a complete and objectifying cage. Eugene’s attempt to “save” her is but a reflection of a social order and confidence, or the lack thereof, that seeks to define the boundaries of a woman prior to her so-called liberation.
Miss March also nervously rubs up against something that Indian audiences might relate to. Our own popular culture also often grapples with contradictions like the tensions between the celebration of modern, self-possessed women, with also discomfort with their autonomy. When Eugene confronts Cindi, it is about more than love lost. It is about the painful reality of a woman with full agency over her existence, who he must come to terms with, without his sanction.
Between Raunch and Reflection
The absurdity of the humor in Miss March is self conscious, whether it is the firetruck chase, or the random meeting with Hefner (who ended up playing an unexpectedly wise version of himself). Still, among the absurdity, one can find the emotional core of the film.
Hefner’s cameo serves the dual purpose of critique and celebration of the culture that surrounds him. His centered and rational lines of absurd dialogue stand out, like a filmmaker’s confession to one their characters, a surreal acknowledgment of the madness of sensory overloads of fame and beauty.
The road trip as a metaphor of creative ambition works, as Eugene and Tucker are always slightly lost. More than the externalized wrong turns, and the internalized self-control, they lose and survive their own impulses, much like the young comedians behind the camera.
A Media Frenzy and a Missed Connection
The release of Miss March did not go well. It responded poorly to harsh critical judgment. It was labeled “juvenile,” “misogynistic,” and “painfully unfunny.” Fans predicting an American Pie were perplexed because of Miss March’s self aware tone and the box office reflected that confusion because it barely made back its budget.
But on a different note, more puzzling and perplexing, Miss March become a “cult failure” and “cult success” among college goers and forum communities. They began “dissecting” it, “outrage” was the word on the “dissection” because it was a film that dared to mock the very genre it belonged to. The more it was “watched” the more “it” reflected “sincerity.” It was awkward it was a the “bad” jokes.
India also has this sort of “failed cult film” phenomenon. The audience response to No Smoking and Delhi Belly was similar. In time, it was appreciated for the boldly dividing this audience. Miss March, in its own wild American way, belongs to that same lineage.
Real Life Began to Creep In Slow
Underneath the humor, deeper narratives lay buried. Soulful, even in the embrace of the jest, Trevor Moore candidly pointed the struggles fame imposes on the psyche, and the deconstruction of the self. Ex member of the comedy troupe Cregger went on to reinvent himself, directing 2022’s Barbarian, and taking the genre to new heights in the decade.
Watching Cregger’s interviews, I was told of the ‘Learned Lessons’ theory knockdowns that follow every failure. The unchained ambition ‘rule breaking’ spirit of Cregger’s seemed diminished, yet the expectation in his words had a `Failure’ pulse.
Miss March hits differently, when the creators of Cregger and Moore show us the bridge. The failed comedy offers a single narrative, yet, for the people trying to make absurd sense of it, it provides a time, and a 2.5 hour window to harness ‘patience’ to the two young men.
A Film about Losing Control
Watching ‘Miss March’ through the Indian lens, one sees contradictions and the dangers of modernity: ‘Morality of modernity, Freedom with expectation, and Discomfort masked with laughter.’
It’s raw, sometimes misguided, but brutally honest — much like the generation that created it. Behind its childish humor is a sincere request for empathy — that every person, however senseless, is struggling to awaken from their own kind of deep sleep and discover their purpose.
And perhaps that is what makes Miss March strangely relatable. It is not refined. It is not deep. But it is very much alive — a product of disarray from visionaries who were too bold to run and take off, yet lacked the know-how to land.
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