You know, parody movies use to be some of my favorite comedy movie around. Airplane!, The Naked Gun series, Top Secret and Mel Brooks movies were the essential comedic movies in my youth. These “parody” movies such Disaster Movie, Meet The Spartans, even Scary Movie are just raping the corpse of comedy. This Epic Movie just made me angry. I honestly feel like these were made for kids to have a movie to go to so they can text and talk. Parody movies are supposed to be insightful with their lampooning and satirical take on the subject matter. This is just everything that is wrong with comedy.
Scary Movie screenwriters Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer join forces to parody the “biggest” movies ever to hit the silver screen in this comedy that gives such popular box-office hits as Pirates of the Caribbean and Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe the same treatment that Scary Movie gave to the slasher subgenre. A virtual smorgasbord of spoof, Epic Movie tells the tale of four fully grown orphans: one the victim of snakes that attacked her plane, another raised by a kindly Louvre curator, the third a Mexican “libre” wrestling refuge, and the last an average mutant from an “X”-community. When the curious quartet visits a sprawling chocolate factory, they stumble across a magical wardrobe which transports them to the enchanted land of Gnarnia. It seems that the wondrous fantasy land has recently fallen under the spell of the evil White Bitch (Jennifer Coolidge), and in order to bring peace back to Gnarnia these four bumbling mortals will have to join forces with a charismatic pirate, a painfully sincere group of aspiring wizards, and one particularly libidinous lion. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Whenever see the names Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer anywhere on movie, I immediately skip it. Conversely if there are any names of writers from the Scary Movie franchise that these movies love to tout as if people will immediately think comedy, I skip it as well. This is the first movie I have had to watch from these “comedy” writers and it was utter shit. Any hack can do what they did since their comedy is all dick and fart jokes mixed current things in popular culture. It’s as if the writers just discovered dick and fart jokes and have to have them in every scene cause that shit is hilarious. It’s juvenile and well past of the point of hackney and their rapid fire pop culture “riffs” aren’t even clever.
Here is a setup for a joke/scene. Since we are just parodying everything about epic movies, remember Snakes on a Plane? Yeah well there is this scene in which some Sam Jackson-esque guy is yelling really loudly cause that is what the actor does and he throws a woman off the plane covered in snakes. But then a split second later there is woman who is suppose to be Paris Hilton that walks out of a store. You know, people hate Paris Hilton and she is a bitch and all, so the woman who was thrown out the plane a scene before lands on her and supposedly kills her. That right there is comedy folks. There are even more egregious pop culture ADHD jokes that aren’t even coherent within the movie, they are just there because teens will recognize them and maybe laugh. Hey remember MTV Cribs, well we have that in there for no reason what so ever and it totally doesn’t slam the brakes on the movie? You remember that creepy Willy Wonka character Depp played? Well we have a character like that in there but way creepier. Also all the fart, poop, and gay jokes you can handle!
Not a fucking thing about this movie is humorous or even remotely can be considered clever. This is designed to assault the viewer with a constant barrage of pop cultural jokes and nothing more. No substance, no humor, no crafted jokes, just a string of non sequitur, pieces of “jokes” and hope that something hits with the audience. I can’t remember what the plot was or even if there was something made me even smile in a humorous way. Referencing cultural touchstones or things in the pop culture zeitgeist is not comedy, that is just recalling shit. It takes a certain craft to mold it into a coherent joke and not just a joke based on a fart or something else juvenile.
