Spring Breakdown, already having spent the past couple of years shelved, finally makes its way to DVD. It should've been buried and never mentioned again. Rachel Dratch stars, along with fellow Saturday Night Live cast member Amy Poehler and former indie-queen Parker Posey, as an aging nerd who tries to reclaim her youth by attending a spring-break blowout with a bunch of college kids. The unlikely reason behind this lark is that these three friends have been employed by a powerful senator who wants them to keep tabs on her supposedly wild daughter (Amber Tamblyn, a talented actress sadly wasted here). The daughter turns out to be just as much of an unpopular nerd as Dratch and her friends.
There isn't a single decent laugh throughout this turd of a movie. Both Dratch and Poehler were quite limited in their comedic skills, but had their moments on SNL. Usually their best work surfaced when they were paired up with more talented cast members, like Dratch's work with Will Ferrell or Poehler's tenure alongside Tina Fey on "Weekend Update." After many years on the show, the limits of their ability were tested as they began repeating themselves ad nauseum. Each new character or impression seemed to be a variation on one they'd done already.
Rachel Dratch often played up her unconventional looks to good effect, almost winking at the audience in acknowledgment that she wasn't blessed with a model's features. Unfortunately throughout Spring Breakdown, her bug-eyed mugging becomes tiring very quickly as she tries vainly to milk laughs from a script she participated in the writing of (she is credited with story only, but in the commentary refers to herself as a co-writer). Poehler fares even worse, as she falls back on her "thirtysomething white woman using hip-hop slang" tactic, so frequently overused in her SNL sketches.
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