The Parody Movie Movie Marathon, Part 2 A comedy article
by Dan Seitz 919 11 09/06/2010 04:59 PM 12544 views
We were on a mission to watch all the films of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, the worst writer/directors in modern cinema [read Part 1 here]. Next up:
"Epic Movie"
This movie opens with what proves to be an increasing problem in the franchise: they can't even be bothered to string a goddamn plot together. Instead they just throw together skits, each parodying a different movie, that come screeching to a dead halt. This makes for awkward transitions between "scenes"; one skit is actually capped off with a cutaway of a random bystander laughing at a joke, as if it's funny.
Who's the guy laughing? We don't know. He's never established. He doesn't look like he's in the same scene. Just in case people wouldn't know to laugh, they grabbed an intern and filmed him laughing.
We're introduced to four "orphans" by parodying four wildly different movies, and then the movie throws open the portal to hell with a Willy Wonka parody. Willy Wonka is portrayed by the single most terrifying actor on the planet, Crispin Goddamn Glover. Just look at that creepy mofo, and ask yourself why anybody would cast him in a comedy.
The answer is: his sequence isn't a comedy. It's pure, unleaded nightmare fuel. After we get the obligatory "chocolate river" joke out of the way (you get one guess as to what the chocolate actually is), we have Crispin Glover and a bunch of midgets in a beautiful sparkly candyland ... murdering people and ripping them apart. At this point, my brain blew a fuse and began screaming. It got worse when the movie implied that he sexually assaulted their corpses, and then brought them back to life to do it all over again. Yeah, that's not something that will haunt your dreams, unless you're normal.
So they escape in "Gnawnia," and the less said about that, the better. Imagine a stupid parody of Cribs, with a Scarface parody lodged in its colon. It ends by introducing the remote from Click out of nowhere, and then showing us flopping, slow-motion man boobs. When you're already nauseated to the point of vomiting, this is not something you want to see.
We must drink to survive
Alcohol Consumed: 16 beers, plus a pint of Coffee Brandy Mocha and two Jack and Cokes.
Ratio of Epic Movies "Parodied" to Non Epics "Parodied": 1:2. Yes, for every movie that could conceivably be considered "epic," there were two that were nowhere close. Also notice that the ratio has inverted in the space of ONE FILM.
Saddest Cast Member: Kevin McDonald, a member of classic sketch-comedy group Kids in the Hall, here reduced to playing a middle-aged Harry Potter. You can practically see him grit his teeth and think of the paycheck every time the camera cuts to him.
"Meet the Spartans"
In Meet the Spartans, Seltzer and Friedberg have moved from hating women to just viewing them as sexual objects, but now they stone hate children instead. Kids get whaled on a lot in this movie, and not in an over-the-top funny way. More like a "child abuse" way. Even my friend who doesn't like kids pointed out how horrible it was. It's really that bad.
The second thing we can take away is that these guys love product placements and game shows, because there are no less than twelve jokes referring to brand name products (two in less than five minutes), and no less than four game show parodies. We're wondering if they paid to be featured, or couldn't come up with the ransom not to.
And, once again, we've got a moment of unintentional horror. You might have seen the trailer, where "Leonidas" kicks Britney Spears into the well, in a parody of the famous "THIS IS SPARTA!" scene. But what you don't know is just how incredibly long this scene of anti-comedy lasts. Time froze, as the Britney impersonator babbled for what felt like decades, trying to cram every ... single ... bit ... whatsoever about Britney Spears into one monologue. It rapidly went from tedious to horrifying to disgusting to tedious again, and the portal to hell yawned ever wider.
Also, Deidrich Bader is in this. Dude, work has been thin on the ground since The Drew Carey Show, but seriously?
A partial listing of all the movies "parodied"
Alcohol consumed: 23 beers, half a pint of whiskey, and half a handle of coffee brandy.
Ratio of Action Movies "Parodied" to Non-Action Movies "Parodied": 1:3
Saddest Cast Member: Kevin Sorbo. We'll give Hercules this: he works his ass off to make the material funny, but it's like an expert juggler paired with five year olds. His timing and delivery are perfect, but nobody around him understands what he's doing, so clubs, knives and torches bonk into their faces on a regular basis.
We had only one movie to go. And it was the biggest disaster of all.
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