Worlds apart

Assuming you buy into their back stories, the college-age stars of “The Real Cancun” are Central Casting spring break characters. Alan is an earnest, skinny kid from Texas who wants to lose his virginity and has never tasted a drop of alcohol. Heidi and David are best friends from Boston who have yet to hook up, despite David’s cuddly, Adam Sandler-like qualities on the guitar. Casey is randy. Roxanne and Nicole are party girls who also happen to be twins; their can-do spirit during a wet T-shirt contest recalls Tony Roberts’ line in “Annie Hall”: “Twins, Max. Think of the possibilities.”

Yet the possibilities, endless as they may be, never explode into the realm of bacchanal. In “The Real Cancun,” producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray take the template from their long-running MTV series “The Real World”-- pick cross-section of twentysomethings, install in funky housing, create instant conflict -- and superimpose it on a spring break idyll. The result is surprisingly genial, even innocent -- a movie without a screenplay that echoes countless coming-of-age-at-the-beach movies, except maybe “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

The poster and the R-rating promise a raunchier version of reality TV, of MTV’s many spring break revelries, but only the twins appear to be doing an homage to the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, with their compact tension-resolution construction (Will she take off her top? Yes, she will! Will those chicks kiss? Yes, they will!).

Yeah, the tequila flows in “The Real Cancun,” and the guys are horny, and the girls are tattooed and willing, and Snoop Dogg shows up toward the end. But Snoop, who did a similar one-off in “Old School,” is getting too good at this, like Bob Hope dropping in on “The Tonight Show.”

Not much about the film, in other words, feels like spring break -- or at least the teen fantasy of spring break the film’s publicity suggests. The 16 cast members are housed in an eerily deserted hotel (I kept counting all the available chaise longues by the pool). Crowds do appear, but as if summoned by crew members cruising around town in vans shouting out call times and promising free T-shirts through a bullhorn.

The film progresses breezily enough, with a pace that doesn’t linger and an alt-pop soundtrack that kicks in with Pavlovian regularity. Various people pair off, eventually yielding shots of under-the-covers copulation, captured on a closed-circuit video camera. Bonds are forged, feelings are hurt. Jorell, the most genuine character in the movie, provides comic commentary. Sara meets a jellyfish, who stings her during a Bungee-jumping mishap.

Alan, clearly the character in whom the producers hold the most narrative interest, breaks down and drinks. He learns to do a proper body shot. He enters the male hot-body contest and wins. He meets a girl -- a deus ex machina in a belly shirt.

What does it all mean? Who knows. Who cares. The movie reportedly cost just $7.5 million to make, with actors who worked for nothing more valuable than the chance to exploit themselves on the big screen (maybe John Travolta should start waiving his fee). Team Bunim-Murray (including producer-director Rick De Oliveira) are good at what they do -- finding people with clashing personalities (or amateurs playing at clashing personalities), shooting lots of stuff and then repackaging the ensemble as an insta-dysfunctional family, a motley version of the “Friends” gang. Their “Real World” has been on the air for 12 seasons now, and they have seen the broadcast networks jump on the bandwagon and weigh it down with cheesy concepts (this week on Fox’s “Mr. Personality,” 20 guys in masks vied for the affections of one woman while Monica Lewinsky looked on).

The networks continue to order up these shows as cheap filler for the Trojan Horse of scripted shows they roll out each season. And for all the talk of the humiliation reality TV engenders, the shows are often stiffly ceremonial, countless boring minutes chewed up by semi-articulate people playing at being on TV.

“The Real Cancun” is better than all that, but it falls short of the audacity the genre deserves. Like, now that “liberation” is here, set a show in one of Saddam’s gutted palaces and call it “The Real Tikrit.”

*

‘The Real Cancun’

MPAA rating: R for strong sexuality and nudity, language, partying

Times guidelines: Lots of tequila drinking, some removing of bikinis, visible male behinds, grainy-video copulation; urine poured on jellyfish sting

New Line Cinema presents, a Bunim-Murray / FilmEngine production, released by New Line. Director Rick De Oliveira. Producers Mary-Ellis Bunim, Jonathan Murray. Executive producers A.J. Dix, Anthony Rhulen, Bill Shively, Richard Brener, Toby Emmerich, Matt Moore. Casting Sasha Alpert. Supervising story editor Eric Monsky. Supervising editor Ben Salter. Music Michael Suby. Production designer Kelly Van Patter. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. In general release.