|
|
|
||
  
Back
Shelf Beauties |
Epic Movie I hope I live to see the day
return when filmmakers and studios realize that a parody movie needs to
be more
than taking the year’s most popular movies, putting them in a
blender, and
letting it all spit out onto the screen like a drunk girl who hits her
limit of
appletinis at 3 AM and can’t make it all the way home. Instead of magic, you get
a mess like Epic
Movie. In Epic
Movie,
Edward (Kal
Penn), Peter (Adam Campbell), Lucy (Jayma Mays) and Susan (Faune
Chambers) are
four orphans who all come into possession of a golden ticket that earns
them
the chance to visit a magical candy factory for, “an epic
adventure”. However,
once there, the four realize they
are in danger and find a magical wardrobe that leads to the Can they win this war as
they come across all sorts of characters that are extremely familiar to
movie
fans? Epic
Movie is
too simple,
too vulgar and too obvious to be Funny Movie.
It’s not even Chuckle Movie or Giggle
Movie. At this
point, I can’t say I was surprised at
several jokes about passing gas, urination, sex and other potty humor,
since
these are the last resorts of the writer who can't or won't do
better, and we see them more and
more these days. However,
what makes Epic
Movie
so bad is the lack of energy, originality and hilarity.
Writers/directors Jason
Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer need more jokes, and a sense of subtlety
that
rewards viewers who pay attention or see the movie multiple times. Of course, after seeing it
once, I doubt you
would want to see it again or feel the need to pay close attention. Instead of layering the
visual humor and scripted jokes, everything about Epic
Movie
is in your face,
with most humor centered around taking characters you recognize and
just making
them dumber, which isn’t all that funny, especially when so
many of them
already are dumber than a box of rocks.
Every
joke practically has a sign hanging around it identifying it as such
(they just
should have added a laugh track and gotten it over with, or maybe some
sort of
message on the screen that instructs the audience when to laugh). Friedberg and Seltzer rarely
show any true understanding of what made characters like Jack Sparrow
or Borat or
any of the other targets so popular, and have no desire to get into
details
that might make the story into one that can stand on its own. We are left with
uninspired and unoriginal
material that could have been written by anyone who bought a ticket as
every
scene is put into Epic
Movie
for recognition instead of trying to develop
something resembling a story. Even worse, our heroes only
seem to succeed when they cheat, and their acceptance as heroes says
much more
about society than we need to get into here.
I just think it is odd that people who essentially
steal their golden
tickets, and do something else less than gallant to win the climactic
battle,
are supposed to be heralded as winners.
I’m not that old, am I? Epic
Movie will
have its
fans, many who will send me hateful email, but it could never stand up
to
classic parody films like Airplane
or The
Naked Gun. Heck,
I don’t think it could stand up to Deck
The Halls or Basic Instinct 2. 0 Waffles
(Out
Of 4) Epic Movie is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and some comic violence.
|
