First I’d better justify (primarily to myself) calling these…things Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer perpetuate a franchise. That’ll be tough, for they barely quality as movies – so much they even need the _____ Movie appellation to even be identifiable as such. And no, that _____ Movie thing ain’t on its own an indicator of a brand name franchise, ala National Lampoon, because of all the _____ Movies which aren’t a part of what I’m calling the _____ Movie franchise. So the Scary Movies obviously don’t count, as they predate the S&F feces-train. Nor do Superhero Movie or Dance Flick, for as mostly worthless as they too are – and I’m flummoxed as to why better filmmakers would latch onto the S&F naming policy. Do these people hate success?
Indeed, Epic Movie is not a sequel to Date Movie. Though it shares some cast, the same writers/directors/semi-humans, the same tone, there’s nothing else. And once we get to the next apocalyptic abortion, Meet the Spartans, even S&F’s naming consistency falls off. So how can I call those, and the cinematic genocides to follow, a franchise?! How are all the “films” of Seltzer and Friedberg a series when I cannot say the same for the far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far (etc.) better work of, say, the Coen Brothers?
This’ll take some effort. It all comes down to indefinite perpetuation. Many a sequel-driven franchise (that is, those without finite stories) has immortality as its goal. There is the commercial ideal of creating a new entry with regularity, say every year, ad infinitum. But many an internally-whole concept tires after a while. Here’s where the indisputable epoch-making genius of Seltzer and Friedberg falls in: They have a guaranteed new movie each year (or so), by opting to churn out rancid, nearly joke-free “spoof” variants on the previous year’s biggest films, and also Nacho Libre. This keeps them from needing to identify actual subjects or genres legitimately worthy of parody, and it negates them from needing to fully lambast or understand their subject. While these _____ Movies are a franchise in only the most nebulous sense, they fit the production mentality of sequels to a T. Makes me doubt my whole sequel-watching project when I can identify this as the epitome of sequelishisnous.
Given Epic Movie’s self-defined task is merely to reference pop cultural effluvia from 2006/7, that tag Epic is a misnomer. Unlike Date Movie, which at least made a quantum (that means small) attempt to stick with a topic, “epic” cinema holds no pertinence to Epic Movie. That’d be against S&F’s stated policy of only mocking things a toddler could conceivably have encountered, when the true epics – Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, you’re getting a sense of a general format here? – mostly date from the early ‘60s.
Okay, so Epic Movie has no guiding framework, no genre to direct it. (No directors either, by my opinion of S&F – who barely manage the merest continuity twixt shots.) This means an actual specific movie will need to provide the foundation. Totally arbitrarily, that movie is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Even now, were I to use that as a parodic starting point, there are other appropriate movies to tackle. There’s that whole high fantasy craze. More specifically, adaptations of high fantasy novels from the mid-twentieth century, leaving Lord of the Rings to lampoon alongside Narnia. That unites J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and –
Seltzer and Friedberg do not take this approach. Forsooth, they’d already “eviscerated” Lord of the Rings in Date Movie, and dried up ALL of their jokes about it. To wit, Gandalf gets struck in the gonads (wait…what about that is satirical?) and Gandalf – Gandalf, mind you, not Golem – says “My precious!” Then we got the token “Sam and Frodo are totally gay for each other” joke, except…it was so understated, it’s as though S&F didn’t even notice that undercurrent! Rather, they simply say something subtly homosexual because, damn me, Date Movie had gone five whole minutes without a gay panic joke!
Okay, so no LOTR. The other chief viable target, Harry Potter, does appear…for all of a few minutes. This is no longer than any of the non-blockbuster movies our braindead slackers chance upon – J.K. Rowling’s epic, multi-book, generation-defining fantasy saga gets equal weight with Snakes on a Plane, Borat, “Punk’d,” “MTV Cribs.” And what joke(s) exulcerate the Harry Potter universe? The actors are old….because that’s for some reason the favorite Potter joke among people who don’t actually understand the series (with its theme of maturation and aging). Tossing in Kevin McDonald of “Kids in the Hall” infamy begs the question. Oh, and actually calling him “Harry Potter?” God, even the worst so-called satirists can at least devise a coarse and unlikable “Hairy Plopper” or some similar offense.
And with many minutes left in the scene, and the scathing “people age” joke utilized, everyone reverts to groin attacks, long may those never tire!
The “old person plays a young person” joke dominates Epic Movie, just as Date Movie was defined by “male appears in a female’s role” jokes. (All uses of the word “joke” from here on out are to be taken as the world’s driest sarcasm.) So it goes with targeting The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a movie headlined by four children. Seltzer and Friedberg cannot work with children (they don’t want their maturity questioned), so they cast four adults instead – four thirty-something adults, which is so far beyond the Scary Movie “thirty-year-olds playing high schoolers” gag (which comments upon an actual movie practice anyway). These four orphans, four giggling, inane, doofy “children” are perpetually, obviously not children, and it takes serious effort to convince yourself otherwise. The movie crumbles from this decision alone, and I could stop right now. (These “siblings” are also of different ethnicities, repeating a useless Date Movie joke, as though you weren’t challenged enough.)
So ignoring the one gag about age difference, why get adults? Because S&F’s humor quiver consists of the following: Groin attacks. Trite sexual references. Boogers. Pee. Poo. Slobber. Sweat. Pus. Semen. Blood. Sputum. Obesity. Acne. Bestiality. Idiocy. Bodily mutilation. Vomit. All highlighted by random, contextless entreaties to urban rap culture, done with the over-eager desperation of two lily-white crumpers. (And movie references. Don’t forget they do movie references!) With such a repertoire of grotesque flatulence to flagellate again and again for 72 minutes, it’s no wonder actual children would get in a way of the PG-13 obscenity.
So…adults it is, lamentably. All this seems like a bad casting joke, and so does this: Jayma Mays, Kal Penn, Faune A. Chambers, Adam “Date Movie” Campbell. No one conveys the proper tone for a ZAZ-styled parody…that is, they never take their own story seriously. They mug and play to the camera, as does the rest of the cast, so horrified that the 40 IQ special-cases in the audience mightn’t “get” a joke. This problem extends to the inarguably funny actors on display – Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard, Date Movie having evidently not been enough shame for them – indicating the issue actually lies with Seltzer and Friedberg. It’s easy to direct all blame back to the auteurs, and one wonders if even the prop department’s chintzy filth is their fault.
It seems likely, as the visual fabric of Epic Movie works just as hard as the actors to convince us we’re not watching one of the movies being parodied – even when that Wolverine-lookin’ mofo is actually listed as X-Men 3’s Wolverine in the credits. This becomes kind of the problem of lampooning not just one, but every multi-million dollar blockbuster in recent memory. With a $19 million or so budget (where?!), you just cannot look like the genuine article. Scary Movie, for its flaws, did well to select Scream, a film that is inexpensive to replicate. Doing Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate factory on a Scream-equivalent budget doesn’t work. Most effort goes into creating a one-foot-wide duplicate of the “river of chocolate.” No room left for jokes, which is why we then end with the obvious chocolate-eating gag. It’s obvious enough, I won’t discuss the minute-long scene it engenders.
A few more specific scenes I wish to dwell upon, as evidence of the movie at large: To mock The Da Vinci Code (oughtn’t be hard), Silas the Albino Monk (name retained, even while Narnia is now arbitrarily Gnarnia) is…wait for it…a black albino monk. Okay…it’s another racial joke, only…I know African albinos! These people do exist, so positing the presence of one as an example of anti-logic on its own just doesn’t fly. And Kevin Hart’s performance is truly atrocious – even in the face of other flailing class clowns, Hart presents “threatening” as an assortment of silly noises, wiggled arms and facial expressions which wouldn’t fly in a Police Academy sequel. And his Latin statements are regularly mistranslated, to allow whatever catch phrase couldn’t be wedged in more naturally elsewhere. Then eventually, the subtitled catch phrases just start appearing even when Silas isn’t speaking. Satire!
The other dreadful example is a moment of slapstick. Jayma Mays’ Lucy Pervertski (take that, um, C.S. Lewis, your work can be reconstituted into potty jokes and raps!) enters “Gnarnia” and discovers the wintry, snow-flecked lamp post. Now, what’s the obvious joke here? I’ll say. She licks the post…and gets her tongue stuck. Damn slapstick, that this cannot then be a one-off gag! No, it’ll take well over a minute to get Lucy’s tongue unstuck – one very loud minute. When the axe comes out, we’re entering unintentional Saw territory. And once the joke’s resolved, a little wriggling bit of Lucy’s muscular hydrostat remains on the lamp post. So…she’s orally deformed from now on? Nah! It’s never mentioned again, much like her sister’s earlier decapitation at the hands of Crispin Glover (!). (She got better.) This isn’t even like how Daffy Duck heals by wandering off screen. This is just contemptuous of all which governs human existence!
Oh God, those pop cultural references! I’ve tossed out several, but there’s more…there’s always more. Here’s some I missed:
Paris Hilton impersonator – It ain’t an S&F joint without her
Mel Gibson impersonator
Pirates of the Caribbean – Jack Sparrow, excuse me, Swallows impersonator. This leads to a rap.
Sean Combs impersonator
James Bond impersonator
Chewbacca impersonator
NASCAR pit crew impersonators – Presented, sans explanation, as fantasy creatures.
Ashton Kutcher impersonator
Flava Flav impersonator
Michael Jackson impersonator
Lauren Conrad impersonator – No wait, that’s actually Lauren Conrad!
Oh right, and Superman Returns
It reads like a week’s worth of “TMZ,” or one of those magazines at the supermarket checkout. As evidence of this “checklist” approach, the villainous White Bitch (oh yes, because you can say “Harry Potter,” but “Witch” is legally off limits) goes on her Brand X social media. Because remember, in 2007 people thought simply mentioning Facebook (or legal equivalent) was a joke. Her page affords more celebrities to be namedropped, totally apropos of nothing, as though that constitutes a joke…
Let’s see: Saddam Hussein, Denise Richards, Rosie O’Donnell, Mary-Kate and Ashlie, Paris, Oprah, one I do not know, K-Fed. Are you not laughing yet?
In a similar moment, non-diagetic naval-themed references pop up on top of the film’s action (this is in the Pirates pastiche), because screw actual wit, we just gotta get that Cap’n Crunch reference in!
Boy, I’ve really just scratched the pestilent surface of this blight – for an exhaustive examination, do see this. It’s anti-humor so profound, I could actually feel other people’s laughter siphoning away into my own mouth. Yes, when you watch Epic Movie, people nearby are deprived of their mirth. It’ll take a season of classic “Simpsons” episodes to restore my own gaiety, and that’s from Epic Movie ALONE. Factor in a week’s worth of S&F shock treatment, and I may become permanently unable to recognize funniness ever again. Surely on the miniscule off chance that there are funny gags in one of these movies, there are lost by mere context; it’s hard to find a clever pratfall amusing while a gang rape is transpiring.
Any rational critique of the S&F legendarium falls upon deaf ears, like showing “Care Bears” to Hitler. And why shouldn’t it? Seltzer and Friedberg have no need to hone their craft. They’re already sitting pretty. With nary an exception, their product is ensured a roughly $80 million gross (that’s worldwide). How can that be, when the cognoscenti regularly rank the duo below Uwe Boll, giving them free reign of the IMDb Bottom 100 to go along with their numerous Golden Raspberry Awards? One answer, which flies in the face of my franchise conception: S&F do not advertize themselves. Excepting that initial “from two of the six writers” crap, they hide their names as far from the public’s sight as possible. The mere presence of a parody movie with the _____ Movie construction (at least, before people got wise to it) has been enough to convince morons they’re about to get something as timeless as Scary Movie.
Idiots watch these movies. S&F prey upon the dumb and the ignorant. Released in January, these movies have little competition, appealing to the underaged and the stoned who simply show up at the movie theater with nothing better to do. Man, I don’t even go to the cinema in January! I know better! But some people don’t, and some people’s introduction to the spoofing format was Scary Movie. To them, untrained or even closed off to the joys of Airplane! (or the works of Mel Brooks, the Marx Brothers…), this is humor, not because it’s recognizably funny, but because it follows the standard set by Scary Movie. And if you’re simply counting movie references, if that is your qualitative measurement stick, then these arbitrary non-narratives…well, I guess they’re enough for some people. I pray for our species.
…
…Ah, another reference I forgot to reference: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Fuck this movie!
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Date Movie (2006)
• No. 3 Meet the Spartans (2008)
• No. 4 Disaster Movie (2008)
• No. 5 Vampires Suck (2010)
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