"Movie 43" R
The old saying 'You didn't pay money for this' applies in the case of Movie 43, as the movie was free and not screened for real critics. This was to avoid to backlash of ridicule it was sure to get once anyone paying top price realized they had been fooled. An all star cast including Knoxville, Jackman, Moretz, Faris, Barry and a host of others cameos are clumped together in a series of comic sketches where some of the jokes almost work, but none of them actually do. The trouble with humor these days is the same with horror, startling or shocking reigns over actual laughs or chills. Had the writers, which included Seth McFarlane, been thinking, they would have rewritten it from the start into a surreal romantic comedy parody ala Jackass meets Blind Date. It could have been brilliant in the right hands. Unfortunately, it was a tad closer to Date Movie meets Dumb and Dumber. Sean Scott and Knoxville beat up a leprechaun in one sketch. Chloe Moretz uses her comic timing in an unexpectedly gross way. Some bigwigs try to sell a faulty music playing naked robot lady. A guy with testicles on his chin goes on a date. A British guy and Halley Berry gross each other out on a truth or dare date. Another date involves super heroes, which was done way better on Robot Chicken a few years ago. A third date involves scat humor and a spume of fake dookey. Then there is a sketch they saved for last involving a cartoon cat spoofing Garfield a decade too late. The wrap around involves a hack writer trying to sell his story to Hollywood, ala the Player, twenty years too late.
In a commentary on humor, Ivan Reitman said something like drama is extraordinary things happening to normal people, and comedy is ordinary things happening to extraordinary people. This means that timing is everything and humor and being funny is not easy. Steve Martin one said, 'comedy is not pretty', and more modern Dave Chapelle said, 'sometimes a turd is just a turd and it isn't funny whatever you do'. They got a whole cast of A list and B list actors and it turns out some of them are funny, but most of them have crappy material to work with, a script that clearly isn't funny, just shocking, and wasn't even worked over by anyone funny. It would have been interesting had McFarlane or Jonze rewrite it to make it funny. I think I would have taken in in the direction Blind Date meets Jackass and made it about Knoxville and Faris the entire time, and their neighbors who are all insane, sort of American Pie meets National Lampoons from back in the day. They just needed to be funny. Subtle humor seems to be alien to the new set of stars.
The sketches go way on too long and some just don't work at all. The guy with the nuts on his chin, Jackman, and the joke is nobody else notices he has nuts strapped to his chin but his date. No delivery. You take a joke like that and you don't deliver a money shot? That's obvious. But they didn't go there. Literally.
The leprechaun one kind of worked but was a little too mean spirited, as was the cat one during the end part. You have to make a joke, not just beat the crap out of something because you don't have a joke.
The truth or dare one squanders the potential of it by having flash forward to the two of them undergoing funny plastic surgery or getting a tatoo of a dick, which is not funny, and not even particularly gross. It's just wrong. Besides, Hangover 2 had a better tattoo gag, It should have ended with the butt grab and escalated in the bar only ending with maybe a cameo by Bill Murray or something cracking a joke.
The checkstand joke didn't have a delivery either. The joke is that the emo kid runs off after his girlfriend and we don't know what happens next? If you're going to spoof something like a Michael Cera movie, at least have it end with them hooking up in a slobbery wet ridiculously over the top kiss under a street light. They didn't go there. They just dropped the ball.
The basketball sketch was really dumb. Okay, you're spoofing Hoosiers and stuff and you make a dick joke. That's it. Dick joke. Great. You didn't show the dick. Why not? You had a guy with balls on his neck. Show a big fake floppy dick dribbling a basketball. At least that's what they would have done in classics like Porky's.
The boy being home schooled by the parents from Hell could have been good bu they blew it there too and had it end with him turning insane and having a date with something weird. It's like, that's the joke. No punchline. He just is nuts. Woo hoo.
The period sketch went too angry in the end. It should have ended with a shower of unmentionable stuff and then that's the ending, just to be gross.
The poo one was just wrong and they almost did it right but ultimately squandered the joke on it ending with shock and awe not with laughs. Poo is only funny to people with the maturity of a 9 year old boy, but somehow in Jackass 3 they made it hilarious. They had Knoxville and coukld have asked him how to make it funny. He might have replied. 'Do it with a fountain if poo instead of a splattering of poo because a gusher is hella funny.'
This movie was horrible, but because it was free, I didn't have to waste more than time. Probably not worth a rental.
Jackman with balls on his neck. Racist jokes. Gun jokes. Producer jokes. This was all done better before in other movies.
After seeing this travesty, you might rent the original The Producers, or Caddyshack, or even Blind Date.
I could see where they were going by they just didn't do it. They didn't deliver the laughs or the goods. (Except for Chloe. So wrong, kid. So wrong).
Review by Adam Browne
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