Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Package’ on Netflix, the Raunchy Teen Penis Quest You’ve Waited For

Netflix’s success this year with youth-appealing comedy has included their high-school blockbuster The Kissing Booth (a top contender for that Best Popular Film Oscar, or so I’ve been hearing), gay rom-com Alex Strangelove, and their young-assistants-in-love crossover hit Set It Up. Now they’re hoping for yet another strong performance from The Package, which takes a big old back-splash into the waters of raunch. Five friends go camping; only four of them make it out of the woods intact. But is it worth a stream?

THE PACKAGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Sean (Daniel Doheny), Donnie (Luke Spencer Roberts), and Jeremy (Eduardo Franco) are preparing for their annual camping trip, an excuse to drink beer, trade bro-ishly vulgar jokes with each other, and celebrate Sean being (temporarily) back from his study-abroad in Germany. This testosterone-y field trip is crashed by Jeremy’s sister Becky (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Donnie’s ex Sarah (Sadie Calvano), because: girls. And then, once the boys get over themselves and get out to the woods, it’s ruined again, this time by Jeremy accidentally cutting his own penis off while peeing/fucking around with his switchblade knife. The film soon becomes a race against the clock to save Jeremy’s dick from a shriveled, necrotic state.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The embrace of immature raunch will remind you of everything from Harold and Kumar to the Farrelly Brothers to literally any movie that used a prosthetic penis for laughs. It will also remind you of American Vandal, if only for its heavy reliance on the comedic properties of repeating the word “dick” over and over again. For whatever reason, the movie it reminded me the most of, in tone and execution, was 2004’s Eurotrip, though I’d be shocked if The Package features anything with the kind of staying power that “Scotty Doesn’t Know” has had.

More recently, the film that comes to mind is the spring hit Blockers, probably because Viswanathan features in both. But that movie handled its teen-sex storyline with a freshness and frankness that felt daring but also completely guilt-free, while every laugh in The Package should come with a hood of shame. Besides the utter lack of restraint in the severed-dick department, there are a bunch of truly regrettable transphobic “jokes,” which only serve to undercut the relatively refreshing gender dynamics which allow the Becky and Sarah characters to participate in the comedy. A movie like Blockers is light years ahead of what in The Package seems deeply retrograde.

Performance Worth Watching: Viswanathan is, I will say again, a star in the making, and I really hope she’s currently crawling out from under an avalanche of scripts being thrown her way. She’s the real deal. I also have to give the stamp of approval to Daniel Doheny, who, between Alex Strangelove and this, proves that he can be charming while playing interesting, likeable characters and …. well, not.

All that said, Eduardo Franco steals every scene he’s in as poor mutilated Jeremy, and I’m really hoping his comedic talents get used for good and not evil.

Memorable Dialogue: The script is dotted with a bunch of contemporary pop-culture references — Donnie’s nascent attempt at facial hair is called a “Narcos coke-stache”; Becky’s angry driving is compared to Furiosa — but I admit I laughed the hardest at “Everything looks like a dick at night!” while the gang was searching in vain for the dick that Jeremy cut off his body.

Single Best Shot: So, yes, Jeremy cut his penis off. And the moment is filmed in such a knowingly over-dramatic way — flying across the moon like a one-eyed E.T. — that you have to top your cap to the shot. It’s like the monkey’s bone turning into the spaceship in 2001. Except, as with everything in this movie, it’s a dick.

Sex and Skin: You’d think a movie that writes itself a blank check for raunch, as The Package has, would make more time for sex. It doesn’t. What we do get is no fewer than two dozen lingering shots of the severed penis, as the gang — but Sean and Donnie in particular — are forced to grab it, touch it, and put it in their mouths for any number of reasons. Lots of films get called immature these days, but the sheer dick-terror experienced by these boys feels like this was written by actual teenage boys.

Our Take: There’s honestly a lot of potential here, and the film is certainly watchable. But after a certain amount of time, you’ve well and truly gotten the joke. But it just keeps going, finding new and repetitive ways to keep the severed dick in play. By the time the Workaholics cameo rears its head, you have to know that we’re spinning our wheels.

Our Call: This is a borderline call, because it is watchable in its stupidity. But I’ll opt against giving the benefit of the doubt to a movie that makes this many jokes about trans people, thanks. Skip It.

Where to stream The Package