Hardbodies

Directed by Mark Griffiths, Hardbodies follows a smooth-talking ladies man (Grant Cramer’s Scotty) as he agrees to help three middle-aged men (Gary Wood’s Hunter, Michael Rapport’s Rounder, and Sorrells Pickard’s Ashby) pick up girls. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill setup that’s employed to somewhat watchable yet mostly forgettable effect by Griffiths, as the filmmaker, armed with Steve Greene, Eric Alter, and Mark Griffiths’ screenplay, delivers a sluggish and predominantly laugh-free comedy that does, at least, benefit from its pervasively affable feel and proliferation of unexpectedly charming performances – with, in terms of the latter, Cramer’s personable turn as the easygoing central character going a long way towards compensating for an exceedingly hit-and-miss narrative. There’s little doubt, generally (and ultimately), that Hardbodies is perfectly content and has no loftier goal than to provide mindless silliness that’s been augmented with copious amounts of nudity, which, although the picture isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, ensures that it never quite becomes the painful, tedious experience one might’ve reasonably expected.

** out of ****