Epic Movie

Saturday, July 26, 2008


To be honest, in a lot of ways, Epic Movie is an improvement over Date Movie. It's just as misguided and barren of laughs as Date Movie, but it's more competently made on a technical level, more colorful, maybe slightly more affable. There are fewer abrupt, awkward endings to scenes, the cinematography looks okay, people seem to understand that they are delivering punchlines. I think Seltzer and Friedberg, with some help from a larger budget, at least this time succeeded in making a movie that looks more like a real movie and less like a random assortment of scenes.


But Epic Movie is worse in one crucial area, and I didn't even think this was possible, but they actually seem to have even less of an idea here of what a spoof is. This time, they make a pop culture reference, but then they intermingle it with a Chronicles of Narnia reference, and then maybe someone gets hit with something. That's what passes for jokes and spoofs.


Take for example, early in the movie the characters end up in Gnarnia (ha ha!), and the movie's version of Mr. Tumnus takes them on a tour of his house. Suddenly it turns into an episode of Cribs. But it's inside of a tree. Crazy, I know. Then, he opens his fridge and it's full of Cristal! Which actually isn't even some sort of Narnian twist. But then P-Diddy shows up... only he's a faun! What?! That's crazy. And for some reason, Tumnus throws a bottle at him and hits him! Hilarity!

Honestly, sometimes this movie feels like a YouTube video made by 13 year olds, except with a multimillion dollar budget.



The worst part, however, is almost unbelievable. I mean that literally: for a few moments, I thought perhaps I misunderstood what was going on. And when I say the worst part, I don't just mean the worst part of Epic Movie. I mean the worst part of all 3 movies we watched. You see, at one point they come to a little village or some shit in Gnarnia. And (I guess this is what the joke is supposed to be) amongst the magical creatures are pop culture figures. Like James Bond is just standing there. So, already I'm confused, and then suddenly Borat shows up. (or, you know, some dude doing a barely passably Borat impression). And he kisses a woman and says to the camera, "She's my sister. She is number 4 faun-prostitute in all of Gnarnia."


Yeah.


That's right.


He just says a joke from Borat. And adds the words "faun" and "Gnarnia." I was speechless. That's not a joke. That's not even really an idea. I don't know what that even is. It even fails to be an accurate reference.


And it's not like Narnia or The Da Vinci Code or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aren't easy targets to a certain degree. They are all ripe for satire. And of course Epic Movie more or less avoids commenting on those movies in any way. It just emulates scenes from them, and then shoehorns in some sort of pop culture reference.


I gave Alyson Hannigan some credit for coming out of Date Movie without looking too bad. I thought that might happen here too with Kal Penn, who has shown acting talent and a gift for comedy in the Harold and Kumar movies, and on House. But that's not the case. I hope he feels embarrassed about this shit. Not because I wish him ill, but because that would be way better than if he thinks this is an acceptable movie. His performance is a complete failure. There are probably two ways to go when you're the lead character in a spoof movie: you can be like Anna Faris in Scary Movie and go completely goofy. Or, even better, you can pull a Leslie Nielsen and try to play the role with some dignity, and let the material undermine your seriousness. Penn opts to play the role like he's a supporting character in a bad romantic comedy. Semi-natural, but one-dimensional and lacking in personality.


Well, at least, unlike the other two movies, the "Unrated DVD" gimmick pays off. The others feel like PG-13 movies with presumably an extra scene added somewhere, but this one actually has fucks and full frontal female nudity.