Monday, September 8, 2008

Disaster Movie


Yep. That's right. I went to see Disaster Movie yesterday.



Now that you all have recovered from the shock, I'll see if I can write an amusing review of the latest magnum opus from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. If you get more than three laughs out of my review, it has been more successful than the movie was in eliciting humor from an audience.

For those of you unfamiliar with "the new masters of the parody genre", they wrote and directed such comic gems as Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet the Spartans. I had never seen one of their movies in it's entirety until yesterday. I knew the trailers were about as funny as a hemorrhoid and I also had been told first-hand just how un-funny they were. But humor is a subjective thing. Roger Ebert once said that the only two genres you can't properly review are comedy and porn. If someone find something funny, you can't tell them it's not and you can't talk someone out of a hard-on. So I wanted to see for myself. Going in I thought I might at least be able to laugh at the movie and its absurdity. Boy was I wrong.

The not-so-clever "parodies" come at you at lightning pace and the worst ones are drug out WAY too long. The end crosscuts between a scene of the black guy fighting Kung Fu Panda and the white guy fighting Beowulf. There isn't anything about the way either character is portrayed that actually spoofs the movies from which they came. They're just there. For some reason Beowulf is made out to be gay and keeps talking about things like Rosie O'Donnell's gay cruise, George Takei, and running an antique shop with his best friend. Gee, Beowulf is gay, that is just a barrel of fucking laughs guys. Thanks.

To give you an idea of how these parodies play out I will describe a typical scene. A "Super Sweet 16" party is going on for the 25 year old man character when Seth and McLovin from Superbad show up to steal the liquor "so they can finally get laid." The other main character, a black guy, decides he needs to shoot them so they won't steal the booze. Just as he's about to shoot them, a side of beef shows up between him and the guys. Then Carmen Electra walks in and tells him to shoot around the beef like in Wanted. Then, when he tries to shoot around the beef, it curves around and hits Dr. Phil. I know you're all laughing already.

There is a really long scene that shows us the Chipmunks going evil. They sing death metal and then attack the main characters. How clever. Take innocent, friendly characters and make them evil. That is the easiest, laziest joke someone could ever make. Just like Kung Fu Panda and Beowulf, there isn't anything that actually spoofs The Chipmunks. That would have taken way too much thought. Friedberg and Seltzer couldn't be bothered with that.

The most mind-boggling "joke" in the movie involves their spoof of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. A dude is passed out at a party and another dude yells "he's asleep, let's prank him!" So Anton comes over and kills the guy with that air gun thing after flipping a coin. Listen, I love dark humor but it has to be funny. That's not a spoof. That's like some shit the real character might actually do! What the fuck?

The movie ends with this bizarre musical sequence that features every single character from the movie in which they all state their names. I shit you not. Just in case you missed all of these painfully obvious movie references, the big musical finale will get you up to speed. Each character sings about how he or she is dating the next character. That left me scratching my head. Why in the name of Zod would they all sing about dating one another? Well, I turned to that vast source of porn known as the Internet for an answer. Apparently, Sarah Silverman, who is about as amusing as blood in my stool, made some song/video called "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" and this wonderful little ditty is spoofing that. I tend to be a day late and dollar short on these Internet fad videos so I'm not surprised I didn't get it. So yeah, the movie explains the obvious spoofs by spoofing something obscure. Brilliant.

So now that I've seen one of their movies, what is my advice to you my loyal readers? By all means, either go see this one or rent one of their other movies. It's worth it just to see it and be amazed. Make no mistake, this is one of the worst movies you will ever see. But it's like some forbidden knowledge that you know will burn you alive should you know it yet somehow you MUST know! You will never truly understand just how awful these movies are until you see one.