An aging ad man decides to bankroll a young guy’s bachelor party in Miami in hopes of connecting with Gen Z sensibilities. The “humor” is crude and empty, with a closing message about growing up. Foul language, heavy drinking, nudity and drug snorting all top a long list of nasty content.
Joe Nixon is a positive sort of guy who carries his optimism into his advertising job.
Problem is, Joe’s boss is pretty positive, too: positive that Joe has aged out of the demographic they’re trying to reach with a new vodka campaign. And if Joe doesn’t find that Gen Z groove, the boss isn’t very optimistic about Joe’s future with the company.
It just so happens, though, that Joe got accidentally added to some random chat group that very morning—a gaggle of young friends heading to a Miami bachelor party on a shoestring budget. Their posts are crazy, free-flowing and Gen Z perfect.
And Joe gets an idea.
What if he were to explain the mistyped mistake and offer to bankroll their trip? Sure, it’s a bit weird. But Joe could pose as some random guy who wants to relive his youth and help a group of strangers. These best-bud bachelors could suddenly move from roach-motel-level accommodations to a posh Miami mansion. And 40-year-old Joe can see what today’s twentysomethings are getting into.
It feels like a perfect win-win.
Yep, Joe will bring along a suitcase full of the vodka he’s trying to market. He can film the guys partying, see what they enjoy. And by the end of a 72-hour stay, Joe will have his answers and enough footage to mount a killer product pitch. He can almost taste the creative director position he’ll earn.
Joe just needs to avoid cocaine. He does weird things when he’s on cocaine.
Of course, nobody mentioned that the incredible Airbnb estate Joe is about to rent belongs to a Miami drug lord … whose main product line is cocaine.
The bachelor party’s guest of honor, Mason, is actually a level-headed guy who wants to marry and settle down. And he challenges Joe to contemplate the priorities in his own life. “It’s all about creating something positive with someone. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your life,” Mason says. Joe eventually follows Mason’s lead: professing his love for his live-in girlfriend, Jen, and asking her to marry him.
In addition, the four Gen-Z friends all try to support one another. One guy, Nick, has created a photo album packed with pictures and mementoes from their past years together.
None.
We’re repeatedly shown a clip of a man “helicopter swinging” his genitals. That’s just part of a series of running jokes about the activity. There are also many jokes and comments about both male and female genitalia and sexual activities throughout the film.
Young men and women frolic in swimsuits and bikinis. Cleavage is regularly showcased. After a vomiting incident, all four bachelor party guys strip down to their undershorts, and someone approaches Joe to pay for sex with one of the nearly naked young men. Police then try to arrest Joe for human trafficking.
One of the four friends, Hunter, just broke up with a girl who cheated on him several times. The other friends joke about the devastating impact of Hunter’s ruined relationship, and then they decide to help him have sex with a random woman in Miami. We see Hunter passionately kissing a woman.
Another group member, Freshman, makes out with several different women, and in one case, he also gropes a woman’s exposed backside. A woman wearing a hat decorated with small penises approaches Joe, crudely propositioning him for sex.
Joe accidently ruins the clothes he’d planned to wear during the long weekend. When he finds substitute clothing, the guys joke that he looks like “Floyd Gay-Weather.”
The bachelor party guys end up on a fishing boat that’s smuggling whale penises. The characters must eventually cling to the large phalluses, using them as floatation devices. Joe smears whale semen on his swollen face after being stung by a jellyfish. Joe and Jen kiss.
While stoned, Joe gets into a fight with a man in an enclosed hallway. They slam one another into the walls and flip and punch each other. Eventually, one of them pulls a gun and blasts a hole through a door.
Joe also gets into a fight with a group of four women in the back of a limo. The young women hit him with their fists, shoes and other objects, and they kick him a few times as well. Joe tosses the gals around and hits them with booze bottles. After the women threaten him with broken bottles and other sharp objects, Joe jumps out of the moving vehicle.
Joe and his bachelor party pals also face a bunch of drug dealing thugs on several different occasions. Sometimes the big men are simply threatening, pushing the smaller guys around. In one case, though, they pull weapons and someone shoots a bullet past Joe’s ear.
The f-word is spit out more that 80 times along with 16 uses of the s-word. There are also multiple uses of the words “a–,” “b–ch” and “h—” in the dialogue. God’s and Jesus’ names are misused a total of six times (three of those combining God with “d–n”). A song repeats a variant of a racial slur.
There are numerous crude references made to male and female genitals. An individual displays an offensive hand gesture.
Booze flows aplenty during Joe’s 72-hour trip. Characters drink a lot of vodka, wine and whiskey shots. In one case, Joe and his new friends are all given alcohol spiked with a sedative and fall over, unconscious. The men then wake to find that they’ve been robbed and dumped on a beach.
Joe also gets involved with drug runners. He ends up stealing kilos of cocaine and snorting the product a couple times. In addition to becoming stoned, Joe takes on a persona that he adopted from a tough, drug-dealing film character.
Some of the guys put nicotine pouches in their mouths and Joe follows suit, though he ends up swallowing the pouches and getting sick.
Nick confronts Joe about him showing up for the bachelor party celebration. “It’s really weird that you came,” Nick declares. “I had no idea that you were, like, 50.”
“I’m 40,” Joe says.
“Still, that’s a lot of years,” Nick concludes. “It’s like I’m hanging with my dad.”
After ruining the clothes he brought, Joe breaks into the Airbnb owner’s closet and starts wearing the man’s clothes.
While in a limo, Joe throws up profusely, coating the other occupants with vomit. After almost being arrested, Joe accidentally steals a police detective’s badge and then uses the badge to gain entry onto a party yacht. Someone defecates in their pants during a frightening moment.
72 Hours is one of those films. You know what I mean.
This is the sort of “comedy” that substitutes crude sex gags, vomit spews and a whole lot of profanely foul idiocy for humor. And then this limping assemblage of crude sex jokes and booze-swilling infantilism wraps up its buffoonery with some quick (and ironic) statements about growing up and making good choices in life.
That closing dénouement might have been better received if we hadn’t just spent more than 100 minutes wallowing in very bad choices. Oh, and the moviemakers stick Kevin Hart out front in the hopes that somehow, somehow this seasoned comedic actor will transform a sow’s ear of a script into comedy gold.
He doesn’t. And it isn’t.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
