The Napa Boys (2026)
The Napa Boys is a movie that’s impossible to explain. Directed by Nick Corirossi and co-written with Armen Weitzman (both of whom star in the film), the movie is presented as the fourth installment in the fictitious Napa Boys franchise–a series of nonexistent direct-to-dvd sequels to the 2004 Alexander Payne film Sideways. In case you never watched Spike TV and need some context, the mid to late 2000s had a slew of direct-to-dvd sequels to popular comedies. In 2009 alone we got Van Wilder: Freshman Year, Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling, and Road Trip: Beer Pong.
The most iconic of this trend was the American Pie Presents series. American Pie (1999) told the story of a group of high school boys trying to lose their virginity and accidentally drinking cum. While it’s most remembered for its gross out gags, it still had some heart to it. Sure, Jim’s dad catches him fucking a pie, but he also genuinely cares about his son. The dudes are all horny, but you can see them beginning to grow and care about more than just sex. The sequels-American Pie 2 (2001), and American Wedding (2003)-follow the same crew of characters into adulthood, but progressively erode any emotional core the characters might have had in favor of Jim’s pubes getting blown onto a wedding cake.
Though they eventually had one more theatrical release with 2012’s American Reunion, the broad interest in this series had waned by the third film. And so in 2005 the original trilogy was spun off into a series of straight-to-dvd sequels. Beginning with American Pie Presents: Band Camp, each entry follows a different one of Stiffler’s relatives. Over the course of the film they will try to lose their virginity and someone will accidentally drink cum. It’s just like the original movie, only made cheaper, faster, and worse.
So when making a parody of straight-to-dvd comedies, why did Corirossi and Weitzman choose to base The Napa Boys off of Sideways? An Academy Award winning Alexander Payne film distributed by Fox Searchlight about an English professor drinking wine sounds about as highbrow as they come. But if taken down to its basic plot-an introverted sad man’s much cooler friend taking him on a trip to get drunk and laid-it’s not that far off from your average sex comedy. Of course, Sideways, like all films, is more than just its base elements. It’s the performances, the music, the writing. Like Roger Ebert said, “it’s not what a movie is about, it’s the way it’s about it.” So, how is The Napa Boys about what it’s about?
Where Sideways had Paul Giamatti’s Miles and Thomas Haden Church’s Jack traveling through wine country, The Napa Boys has Miles jr. and Jack jr. traveling though wine country and accidentally drinking cum. Opening with a long shot of the California countryside, we watch a car in the distance drive into view over an orchestral score. As the car comes more into focus we see that it has giant fake grapes on top of it and the name “Wine Wagon” painted across the side. Driven by Jack Jr. (Corirossi), the Wine Wagon pulls into a parking spot outside a comic convention and we see the license plate says “h8mrlot,” a deliberately overused Sideways joke and a shot we’ll see multiple times throughout the film.
At the comic convention we learn that Miles Jr. (Weitzman) has been making graphic novels of all the previous Napa boys adventures, and a woman named Puck hosts a Napa Boys podcast. The covers of the graphic novels, and the bits of Puck’s podcast we hear are about as close as the film gets to exposition before the characters hop in the Wine Wagon and head to the Napa Valley Wine Competition. We then get the full title card: The Napa Boys Presents: The Napa Boys 4-The Sommelair’s Amulet. The trio is joined by three more Napa Boys: a lawyer literally named Stiffler’s Brother. Mitch Mitchelson, whose vineyard will go under if he doesn’t win the wine competition. And Kevin, whose thing is that he’s a normal guy. The plot is pretty inconsequential as the movie is more concerned with using jokes to break its own reality over and over.
By positioning itself as the fourth film in a franchise the movie does a few things simultaneously. The characters reference adventures we never see, and run into other characters they have a shared history with that is never fully explained. Because why would it be? We’ve been with the Napa Boys through at least 3 previous films! We know all about Jack Jr. hooking up with The Milfonator, or why Squirm hates the Napa Boys. But also, by being the fourth in a series it has the tone of being on its last legs. The film’s lower budget is highlighted, we get the impression that more popular characters couldn’t be bothered to return, and the jokes are delivered as if they’ve been done to death.
It’s tricky making a movie that is stupid on purpose. For every Wet Hot American Summer there are a hundred Sharknados. The Napa Boys threads this needle by simply having too many layers of irony to discern the intent of any given scene. During the wine competition Jack Jr. takes drugs that turn out to be a combination of laxatives and boner pills. He thus has no choice but to violently shit and cum into a barrel of Mitch’s wine right before Miles jr. drinks it. This scene is both a riff on the lengths direct-to-dvd comedies would go to justify a gross out gag, while still being a successful gross out gag in its own right. It’s simultaneously contrived and clever. Coirirossi is fully committed to the physical comedy of the joke, while also winking at the audience about how over the top it all is. The ironic distance collapses into itself.
Though the pitch of the movie is a parody of 20-year-old dvds, it’s more a commentary on contemporary Hollywood franchise management. It’s literally about getting the gang back together for one last adventure. There’s a recurring Lord of the Rings riff, a hideout reminiscent of the Losers’ Club in It: Chapter 2, and Jay and Silent Bob show up for a scene. Later in the film the boys run into The New Class of Napa High, a group of cool teens who love wine and going on adventures. The Napa boys is a years long beloved franchise after all, so it only makes sense that by 2026 there would be a younger hipper reboot. And in case it wasn’t clear, the characters literally say that.
Amidst all this self referential irony are jokes that would feel right at home in a more straightforward, absurdist comedy. Someone does a sexy dance to the Chipmunk Adventure soundtrack, a fight with a stop motion moose, the line “if there’s anything that ruins the vibe in America, it’s a school shooting.” That these jokes are delivered with the same earnestness as the gross out gags or the purposefully “bad” jokes give the film an actively aggressive attitude towards the viewer. The minute you think you’ve gotten a handle on the film’s wavelength it’ll turn. It’s not so much keeping you at arms length as it is shoving you over and over again.
Your mileage may vary depending on how many alt comedy podcasts you listen to, and how much you wanna see Francis Ford Coppola cuck somebody. But ultimately what begins as a parody of tired comedy sequels ends up as one of the most wholly original comedies I’ve seen.