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| Epic Movie (2007)
 
Starring:
Kal Penn, Adam Campbell, Jayma Mays, Faune A. Chambers, Jennifer Coolidge, Darrell Hammond, Carmen Electra, Fred Willard, David CarradineDirector: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer Rating: PG-13 Category: Comedy  |
To the Bullz-Eye editorial staff:
Dude, I am through.
When I was the new guy, I was drafted to go see “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.” Sure, some nights, I still wake up, drenched in a cold sweat, screaming “Git-R-Done!” at the top of my lungs (which really freaks out my wife)…but, hey, I was the new guy, and the new guy always has to go through an initiation period. A few months later, when I was politely asked to cover “Scary Movie 4,” I accepted...but my annoyance was palpable when the time came to write my review, which resulted with the closing lines, “Well, Mr. Editor, go ahead and pencil in that someone’s going to have to review ‘Scary Movie 5’ for sometime in 2008. Just don’t put my name next to it.” But now, after having begrudgingly gone to see “Epic Movie,” that’s it.
In the words of Popeye the Sailor, that’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!
Someone else is going to have to be your bad-movie whipping boy from now on, because I’ve just taken a quick test, and I have officially lost seven IQ points as a result of today’s screening…which, for the record, cost me $7.00. Losing one IQ for every dollar I spent to see a movie is not in my job description. And, believe me, I checked.
“Epic Movie” is so dumb that National Lampoon would reject the film, saying, “Sorry, but it would damage our reputation to be associated with your film.” It starts with a concept that’s right out of an issue of either Cracked or Mad, with parodies of characters from several different films teaming up with each other for an adventure, but at every turn, it attempts (and fails) to score its laughs via gross-out gags, slapstick, or just the uttering of obscenities…though, of course, it never gets so obscene that they lose their PG-13 rating. God forbid they should’ve knocked this thing up to an R-rating; the theaters would’ve been completely empty…and, as it is, most people under the age of 18 will struggle to find laughs within these 86 minutes. Parodies of “Cribs,” “Punk’d,” and the “Lazy Sunday” short (“We’re the Pirates…what?...of the Caribbean!”) prove only slightly funnier than the piss, shit, puke and fart jokes that surround them.
It is so awful that only once did I react to anything on the screen with any audible sound that wasn’t a groan…and, conveniently, since the moment has been permanently seared into my brain like a branding iron, I can tell you exactly when that happened.
It was when Fred Willard, after an off-screen ménage à quatre, grimaced, farted loudly, and pulled the blanket over the heads of his recent sexual conquests, yelling, “Dutch oven!”
At that moment, I was stricken with the kind of nervous laughter you’d offer up if your best friend worked for PETA and they caught you at a cockfight. I was only able to vanquish this highly inappropriate case of the giggles by transferring my focus from the act of laughing to the act of raising the hood of my sweatshirt, lest I be recognized by anyone in the theater. (For the record, I kept it raised until I was safely back in my car.) The only way I made it through the remainder of the film was to begin my list of people I no longer have any respect for; you can find it at the top of my review, right after the word “Starring.”
So that’s it. I’m laying down the law: I’m not spending another cent on movie reviews. It’s free preview screenings or nothing. As it is, I’ve already convinced myself that I didn’t spend that $7.00 on a movie ticket; I spent it on a sweet-ass poster for “Black Snake Moan,” which is done up like the cover of a pulp fiction novel, with Samuel L. Jackson wearing a dirty white tank-top and wielding a chain. In truth, the poster was free, but on the whole, I’m finding it a hell of a lot easier to rationalize spending the money on the poster than on “Epic Movie.”
In closing, I should probably sign this with a pseudonym, lest someone read this review, see my name at the bottom, and say, “Dude, you actually went to see that piece of shit?”
No, I most certainly did not. I think you must be mistaking me for…~Alan Smithee
wharris@bullz-eye.com
DVD Review:
Midway through navigating the not-so-special features that appear on the single-disc release of “Epic Movie,” it finally happened: proof that movie critics aren’t crazy for thinking Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are the most talentless pair of hacks the industry has ever seen. It came during a “Making the Video” segment when Darrell Hammond looks at the camera and says, “I can’t believe they pay us for this.” Neither do we, but for some reason, people continue to throw away their hard-earned money on this crap-covered crap with crap filling.
The rest of the DVD includes a commentary with the film’s co-writers/directors Friedberg and Seltzer (who continue to showcase their lack of humor), a separate audio track (“Breaking Wind”) with additional fart and burb sounds, several featurettes of the cast/crew riffing on-set (“Everyone Loves the Beaver,” “Epic Porn,” “Hot or Not,” “What Makes Aslo So Irresistible?”), outtakes and an alternate ending. Oh, and let us not forget two Fox Movie Channel Presents extras featuring Fred Willard, as well as the three-minute short “Die Libre,” part of the Viral Video Contest and perhaps the funniest thing on the entire disc.
~Jason Zingale
jzingale@bullz-eye.com
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