MOVIE REVIEWS : A DO-IT-YOURSELF ‘TEST’

It was probably inevitable that somebody would make a movie like “Screen Test” (citywide), but it shouldn’t be inevitable that anyone sees it.

It’s another comedy devoted to the allegedly raunchy and uproarious antics of a bunch of “daffy, goofy, sex-crazed guys,” (1) howling through high school, (2) cavorting through college, or (3) debauching their way frantically through any number of professions, from police work to plumbing to fast food to the CIA.

Those wild and crazy guys! Those madcap lechers! Those sex-crazed daffy goofs! Where would the movies, higher education or the economy be without them?

“Screen Test” is about four more Daffy, Goofy, Sex-Crazed Guys--one smart aleck, one virgin, one con man, and one blimp--suffering through a sexual drought and stumbling on an ingenious scam. They’ll disguise themselves as four porno film makers (actually, given their limited resources, porno video makers), conduct screen tests, stage steamy scenes and cast themselves as co-stars--taping the action in their own inimitably daffy, goofy way (i.e., without tape.).

As with all DGSCGs, this quartet manages to snafu everything: auditioning German shepherds, tangling themselves up with sadomasochistic plastic surgeons and casting a Mafia princess (thereby enraging her father, who demands the destruction of the footage they haven’t shot). As usual, everything is accidentally solved, and they wind up successful beyond their wildest fantasies.

“Screen Test” hits and maintains a consistent squalid level. Even by DGSCG standards, it’s depressingly cheerful. There’s nothing distinctive or surprising here, beyond allusions to Kurosawa, Polanski and Picasso, and an unusual number of bestiality gags involving dogs.

Given this premise, you can save money by writing the movie yourself in the next hour or so. You might even come up with some of the same jokes, including the one about the two critics, one bespectacled and chubby, one thin and balding, who conduct a program called “Sneak Preverts.”