Spermagheddon

Two teenagers decide to lose their virginity, setting off a desperate race between hundreds of spermatozoa to see which one will reach the egg first.

In October, I went to Trieste, Italy.

A port city in the far northeastern corner of Italy, Trieste is a mix of Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and Slovenian influences set hard up against the head of the Gulf of Trieste in the Adriatic Sea. Known as the “City of Coffee,” it was considered to be the end-point of the maritime leg of the famous trade route known as the Silk Road, and was an important deep-water port owned by the House of Habsburg, an aristocratic family that was as powerful as it was inbred. Now, it's just a nice little seaside city, and in October, it had a film festival called the Trieste Science Fiction Festival.

While I was there, I saw several films.

Spermagheddon was one of them.

In a nut shell, it’s basically like the Pixar film, Inside Out, only if Inside Out was a about teenage sex, and was also a musical.

The product of Norwegian Filmmakers Tommy Wirkola, best known in America for the Nazi zombie films Dead Snow, and Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead, and Rasmus Silvertsen, who has worked on several things, but probably not anything that could be called “well known” in American, Spermagheddon is a sweet and cute, and also raunchy and a little gross, but surprisingly entertaining film.

According to Wikkola:

"The pitch was: Cannonball Run... with sperm. I initially tried to get it set up in the U.S., and had a lot of fun meetings, with plenty of laughs, but every time it went up the ladder, there was an executive who said: ‘No, we’re not going to do that. We won’t go there.’ So I thought, let’s see if we can make it in Norway, where there are really no restrictions on what you can do, and nobody telling you that this is too much. A musical wasn’t the original idea, but in the process of developing it with my writers, we came up with a few songs. I never had any desire to make a musical, but as we started playing around with it, it became a huge thing and I embraced it. Now those are my favorite parts of the movie when they explode and sing and dance, the absurdity of the musical numbers and who’s doing the singing."

Much like how a film like Handling The Dead could be said to feel very Norweigian in certain ways, Spermagheddon also feels very Norweigian, but in very different ways.

Spermagheddon follows two stories.

One story features a teenage boy named Jens, as he meets with his friends for a cabin getaway over the summer. Among those friends is a teenage girl named Lisa. Lisa and Jens are super hot for each other.

In fact, the entire reason for this cabin getaway is basically because the two of them are planning to fuck as much as possible. And also to sing about it, of course, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Understandably, they're both really excited for this trip.

The second story centers on the abundance of life swimming around within Jens’ testicles. Within that wrinkly little flesh sack, there is a whole wide world of wiggly sperm, all of them eagerly awaiting the day when they will finally get their chance to fulfill their destiny, and fertilize an egg.

Here, we meet a pair of sperm students, the nerdy Simen, and his crush, the overachieving Cumilla, as they go about their daily lives either being taught about their purpose for existing, or training for the big day.

And all while singing about it, of course, as the opportunity presents itself.

The film juxtaposes Jens and Lisa’s various awkward sexual encounters as they learn about their bodies, and each other, with the action-packed tale of Simen and Cumilla’s perilous journey from the depths of Jens' body, into the bowels of Lisa's, as they strive to overcome the myriad of obstacles in their way, all in order to get that one chance to accomplish the one thing they were meant to do with their lives... become the first one to reach Lisa’s egg and burrow their way inside.

But standing in Simen and Cumilla's way is an evil sperm named Jizzmo.

A guitar-wailing, wealthy, and privileged d-bag, who uses an Iron Man-type suit, complete with blasters and jet propulsion, to give him an unfair advantage when it comes to reaching the egg first, Jizzmo will stop at nothing to fertilize Lisa's egg, which would doom the unborn child to being a selfish prick.

And so, with the destiny of the baby hanging in the balance, the race is on...

Just a head’s up…

This film talks frankly about sex, so if you're a weirdo Christian prude, maybe instead of watching this film, you should just stay home and white-knuckle-clutch those pearls while gibbering in tongues.

Also, fair warning, this film relies heavily on puns, like… “better ejac-u-late than ejac-u-never.” And I’m not going to sit here and try to claim that some of them aren’t at least a little chuckle-worthy, but they’re still puns, so I mean, your mileage might vary. Like, there are a lot of puns. I think Europeans just find that kind of shit funnier in general.

But all that having been said, while the humor is pretty cheeky, and mostly revolves around sex and bodily functions, it’s surprisingly not that naughty. Maybe most importantly, it doesn’t actually show anything at all, at least as far as cartoon teenage genitalia concerned, or even any of their sex acts. It doesn't even show a boob. So, it's definitely not cartoon porn. It's not even a run-of-the-mill Bathhouse episode of an anime, so… y’know… it's fine for the whole family.

I say that in a joking way, but it’s also true.

The best part about this film, besides the catchy tunes, is the educational aspect, not just during Simen and Cumilla’s journey from the testicles to the womb, and everywhere within the body they go in between, but as a general lesson on human reproduction.

Although, just FYI, sperm can't get to the womb by taking the long route up through the butthole, okay? Just... putting that out there.

Anyway, the film also focuses heavily on the idea of consensual intercourse, safe sex, and the importance of parental planning too, and again, this is all while, say… a bee’s nest falls on Jens' penis in a very Looney Tunes kind of way. The film uses its humor, as well as its catchy musical numbers very effectively as a way to impart important messages about safe sex, and about reproductive rights, and not just in an entertaining Pixar-but-for-adults kind of way, but in a way that would be easily accessible for all kids and teens.

Honestly, if this country wasn't such a Fascist Christian Nationalist piece of shit, I'd say that this would be a good film to be shown in Health classes in schools. It's fun. It's engaging. Best of all, it'd be a good conversation-starter with kids. Maybe not elelmentary school kids, sure, but middle schoolers? Definitely.

I was surprised. It was impressively done.

So, who knows if this film will ever get distribution in America. With the crazed cultists of the current ugly Christian Evangelical Nazi Dystopia finally achieving their greatest dreams of implementing their racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and hypocritically puritanical world view on society, wide distribution probably isn't going to happen any time soon, but if you're interested, maybe keep an eye out for it on Amazon Prime, who knows.

Sweet, funny, suprisingly smart, and really entertaining, Spermagheddon tells a good story, all while including an intelligent and accurate message about sexual health and human reproduction, while still being a 100% raunchy comedy about a pair of unsupervised teenagers doing it like crazy, in as many different ways that they can, while also being an adventure story about a group of sperm friends on a dangerous journey through a strange and unfamiliar cuntry.

Heh… puns.