Cattle Call

I gave this movie one bonus point for a total rating of 5 out of 10, for the insight it offered about the inner workings of Hollywood, which had puzzled me after seeing KNOWING the previous day. It turns out that all you have to do to make a flick is cobble together some ideas from other people's scripts (the English caption function built into most DVD's can carry even the most illiterate crew member through the dialog portion of this step), and then tell anyone who shows up for the casting call (or "cattle call," here) just to do what they feel comfortable with (it obviously worked for director Alex Proyas and star Nicolas Cage in KNOWING, to the tune of this week's number one box office hit). So thanks, National Lampoon, now all is illuminated.

The best in this movie is the intro music theme.... The plot is somewhat OK but the execution is bad.... The acting is bad.... I liked only the one that played the nerd strange guy from the leading roles but still he could improved his performance.... The dialogs and black humor is far from top.... The movie does have 1-2 funny moments The movie does have a lot of pretty ladies!!!! probably on purpose.... I wouldn't suggest renting this movie... The best in this movie is the intro music theme....

You're thinking, "National Lampoon"? It must be funny! No. It's not funny. No laughs, no chuckles, certainly no guffaws. It's not even mildly interesting. Three deadbeats set up a fake casting agency. Using no money. Huh? They rent a studio-like office and convince hundreds of desperate women that their stupid questions about sex and men have some connection to a movie audition. They get caught out, are sodomised by some butch lesbians with electrical implements, charged with fraud, go to trial, then, in one night, magically pull together some bits and pieces of video-tape, sufficient to convince a judge it was for real all along. Oh, and the main deadbeat gets the beautiful girl anyway. Dross. Don't waste your time. No, even the lesbians-with-the-electrical-implements bit was mercifully brief and dull. Really. Okay, some of the other stuff was even more dull, but this was dull, too. [ 2/10 ]

It has been my experience that 9 out of 10 National Lampoon movies are unwatchable, and while "National Lampoon Cattle Call" is far from the worst, it is still bad. Aside from the classic "Vacation", "Animal House", and "Van Wilder", and the marginal "Deadly Sins" and "Gold Diggers", everything else has been simply awful, including "Cattle Call". This is essentially a one joke movie, and the joke is both unoriginal, redundant, and boring. Most of the crude efforts for a laugh totally misfire, and the overly simplistic script simply has nowhere to go. The entire film seems tired from beginning to end. Throw in the towel early, because essentially you will not miss anything you haven't seen before. - MERK

It ain't no Vacation movie but I guess I could say it was worth the rental..sorta. I had small mixed feelings about this movie. The premise of the movie was good, it was just the movie itself that was bad. Diedrich Bader had a very weak performance in this movie and Thomas Ian Nicholas showed me why again I never really found anything special about him. Although there were a few times where I laughed, the romantic parts felt like I was watching a bad TV-movie. If I were you, I would approach this movie with caution, you'll like it if you're a die-hard National Lampoon fan. You'll be disappointed if you're expecting a Dorm Daze movie. I just hope that there is no sequel in the works.

I believe that there is SOME good in everyone. In the case of the guys who are producing films for NL these days, you'd need a scalpel to find it. Bad script, bad editing, bad directing, but when all is said and done not good at all. I would say this film was poorly acted but it's hard to tell with a director this bad. NL would have been better off just putting the camera on a tripod in front of Jonathan Winters, hitting record and saying 'go.' Since Nicole Eggert doesn't get naked in this, Winters is the only thing worthwhile about the whole production. He's only in it for about five minutes or less.