This is that film about the guy who chops his own dick off (as it’s probably always going to be remembered as), although it’s unlikely to go down in comedy history as anything other than a missed opportunity. Up and comers Daniel Doheny, Sadie Calvano, Geraldine Viswanathan, Luke Spencer Roberts and Eduardo Franco star as the teenage stereotypes who hike into the woods for a weekend of banter, binge-drinking and awkward sexual repression. Four of the five are obviously going to couple up at some point, so the film gets rid of the annoying fifth wheel (Franco) by having him drunkenly slice off his own penis with a switchblade. To be fair, the other kids do the right thing by immediately phoning for an air ambulance and packing the bloody member in ice, but they manage to mess up when the paramedics arrive by giving them the wrong cooler. As their haemorrhaging friend makes his way to hospital, the gang has just 12 hours to run back down a mountain and reunite him with his muddy, vomitty penis before it rots beyond all repair. Penises, in general, are pretty funny – and the film has plenty of fun with its main star by cramming it into toilets and mouths and snake pits until you feel like you’ve seen it do everything you actually want to see it do. But it’s hard not to feel like a good film needs a bit more than just a dirty little prosthetic dick. The best joke comes midway through the film when Franco’s character sadly looks at a wilting rose from his hospital bed – its petals starting to fall, à la Beauty And The Beast – but Szymanski ruins it five minutes later by repeating the joke and explaining it in full. Sadly, every gag in The Package is delivered in the same way – signposted, fumbled and over-egged until the whole thing looks like a lesson in how not to be funny. Likewise, a string of neat twists to keep the film moving, but you’ll see them all coming long before they actually arrive. Doheny and Calvano, in particular, do a good job of making their slightly annoying characters seem a bit more likeable, but these still aren’t kids you actually want to spend 90 minutes with. The Package is out now on Netflix.
