Date Movie

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Okay, seeing this on my blog is blowing your mind. You probably feel embarrassed for me. Hear me out, though. A few weeks ago, I saw the trailer for Disaster Movie. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor. I don't know if 2 more inexplicable minutes of film have ever been put together. At this point, it's pretty cliche to even bother pointing out the flaws in these Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer _____ Movies, but I'll go ahead and do it any way. Their movies are ostensibly spoofs or parodies, but they don't actually spoof anything, they simply reference recent movies or pop cultural figures, and then have them get hit in the nuts instead of coming up with a joke. The Disaster Movie trailer distills this idea to it's purest essence... it doesn't appear to contain any real jokes, except a weird Don't Mess With the Zohan moment that I think counts more as a stolen joke than as a reference.

Well, once I got past the shock of it, I went into smug bastard mode. I scoffed so hard that both my monocle fell out and my beret slipped off my head. I figured I'd go home and write a 50,000 word dissertation on why Disaster Movie represented the end of comedy as we know it and post it on the IMDB message boards or something. Then it dawned on me: as much shit as I've probably talked about these movies, and as positive as I was that they sucked donkey dick, I had never actually seen one.

Well, guys, I'm all about giving movies a fair chance. And I'm also equally all about self-improvement. (I guess I have two "alls"? I dunno). And sometimes, to understand more about how film works, it's important to analyze films that don't work. So somehow that lead my brother and me to the idea of watching Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans in a row. The 2008 Spoof Off? The Hilar-a-thon?

Date Movie I think pretty much met my pre-conceived notions. It was a sloppy, awkward film filled with references to other films but few actual, original jokes. Like when the main character is getting a makeover, but they do it Pimp My Ride style, and suddenly she turns into Darth Vader, I guess as a reference to Revenge of the Sith, and then her sidekick suddenly looks like Yoda for a second. Ugh. But what's even worse is when they will pretty much just steal a joke from another movie, like when the main character re-enacts Kevin James' goofy dance from Hitch. Or sometimes they will steal a joke but try to kick it up one notch, like when they re-enact that basketball scene from Along Came Polly when Ben Stiller's rubs against that sweaty, hairy guy's body. Only this time when it happens, the guy gets some of his hair in his mouth. See, that's not spoofing the scene. It's just taking a joke from another movie and very slightly tweaking it.

I don't even understand this idea of parodying comedy. I mean, it would be one thing if this movie tried to undermine the cliched structure of your typical romantic comedy. Like say, have jokes about how lovers in romantic comedies fall in love waaaaay to fast. Or maybe spoof those scenes where the hero makes a big, embarrassing public announcement to win back the affections of the heroine, which always struck me as more likely to alienate the girl than win her back. But no. Date Movie, when it's not just randomly referencing a bunch of movies that aren't date movies (like Kill Bill, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and so on), will just copy a famous scene or joke from a recent movie, and slightly change that. I mean, what the fuck is that? Ostensibly, these scenes they are rehashing are already supposed to be funny. How do you make fun of that? It's already a joke. Repeating someone else's joke in a louder voice isn't somehow spoofing their joke. It's just re-telling it in a less funny manner.

And worse, instead of doing anything to mock the structure of a romantic comedy, Date Movie actually just has one of those terrible plots. It doesn't take the plot seriously, but it doesn't derive any humor from it either. It's like a typical date movie, only lazier.

The movie reaches the apex of awfulness/amazingness at the very end, when the plot wraps itself up, the boy and girl get married, and it should be over, when suddenly they take a trip to "Kong Isalnd" just to work in a worthless King Kong reference. Where the fuck did that even come from? What does that have to do with date movies? It's so fucking bad that it's actually kind of funny that it even happens, like maybe the movie is spoofing itself.

The lead actress is Alyson Hannigan, who brings a likability and enthusiasm that the movie doesn't deserve. Otherwise, everyone else looks like a deer in headlights. They don't even look like they are having fun, more like they are cashing a paycheck.

Now, I'm probably sounding like I'm being pretty hard on this movie. And, well, I guess I am. It's terrible. But it's not as bad as I was thinking. It is entirely unfunny and completely lacking in even a basic understanding of humor, but it's just so bland and inoffensive and maybe vaguely affable that it doesn't really stir up any hatred in you. It's brainless and soulless, but it's not an asshole.

Next, we moved on to Epic Movie.