Eurotrip

This teenagers-abroad comedy is full of randy high-school-boy humor that turns out to be -- surprise, surprise! -- kind of funny.

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By Stephanie Zacharek

Feb. 20, 2004 | To grasp the nuances of the randy teen comedy "Eurotrip," you must be able to laugh at the following sentence: "Europe's officially the worst country on earth!" That's the line uttered by a character who went to Europe to get laid -- his theory is that America was founded by prudes who left Europe precisely to get away from hot European sex -- and came back with nothing more than a lousy T-shirt.

Well, almost. The giddy ridiculousness of "Eurotrip" is a pleasant surprise: The picture starts out slow and unsteady in its rhythms. But just when you begin to wonder if it's ever going to get funny, or if it's going to be merely desperate all the way through, it lifts off like a wobbly helicopter -- and somehow it keeps flying. Scott Mechlowicz is Scotty, who has just graduated from high school (great) and has also been dumped by his hot girlfriend (not so great). For years, he's been enjoying an e-mail correspondence with a German student named Mieke, who he assumes is a guy. What a numbnuts!