Project X writer to critics: "get over it"

"Project X," which earned over $20 million this past weekend, has turned into a surprise smash hit. But while fans seem to dig the risque movie about a bunch of teens who throw an out-of-control party, critics haven't been so kind, not because the movie isn't good, but rather because of the message the movie is supposedly sending to kids. But now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, "Project X" screenwriter Michael Bacall has a message of his own for those critics:

Get over it.

"The criticisms about the movie being amoral because kids are dancing and drinking and having a good time, I think that’s absurd," Bacall said. "Because kids have been dancing and drinking and altering their states of consciousness for a very long time, and this is nothing new.

"I find it kind of silly to stand on the rooftop and shout about how amoral a party movie is, when in our kind of American pop culture, we've got so much incredible violence happening," he went on. "I don't usually hear those criticisms of hyper-violent movies with cartoonish head explosions. So I’d have call b.s. on that aspect of the criticism."

In fact, Bacall thinks the movie actually has a lot to say about a subject important to all teens: Growing up.

"I look at it really as this kind of teenage instinct that I think every kid has," Bacall said. "It becomes fulfilled in different ways, but I look at it as a teenage instinct to find your identity and feel like you've done something on your own. The thing these guys do turns out to be massively irresponsible and possibly tragic, as we fade to black, but I think the value in it for them is in kind of finding out where their limits are. Granted, there are more productive ways to do that, but this is the path that these guys decided [to take], and given that's the concept of the movie, we wanted to just make that path as deep as possible."