There's nothing wrong with movies that make fun of other movies or that toss in visual cues with no other purpose than to get a laugh or at least a nod of recognition. It's a trick nearly as old as the medium itself (the very first movies obviously had nothing previous to reference), and some filmmakers have had fine careers as cinema satirists (Mel Brooks for one).
But what about a movie that consists of little but references to other movies, with only the thinnest excuse for a plot to string them together?
Writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have made a nice chunk of change doing exactly that--lifting ideas from other moviemakers, throwing them together without any discernable craft, wit, style or substance and calling them a movie. They've done this a few times, with titles like Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans.
Their latest "effort," Disaster Movie, opens later this month. This morning, one of my co-workers offered me a free pass to a preview for it. I declined, but couldn't help but stare in something approximating awe (without any of the positive connotations that word usually carries) at the poster art, which features references not only to hits from last year (like Juno, Enchanted and Alvin & the Chipmonks), but blockbusters from this summer like Kung Fu Panda, The Dark Knight, Wanted, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Sex & the City, Hancock, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Oh, and there's an Amy Winehouse lookalike on it, too.
The poster for Distaster Movie hints at a level of creative bankruptcy that borders on the pathological. Yet some people will look at this poster and smile, will pay top dollar to see it on the big screen, will laugh heartily at all the visual cues and buy the DVD when it comes out.
I have no desire to meet these people. None at all.
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4 comments:
I have a hunch you'll appreciate each other's posts...
Ed, meet Tony.
Hi, Ed!
I would like to think that these guys have hit a wall. Literally, that they've driven their cars full speed into a brick wall (not fatally, just enough that they'll be unable to make any more movies).
But also metaphorically in that... they've got a movie coming out that makes fun of trailers to movies that weren't even out yet when this thing was conceived. I'm hoping that once they've done that, they'll have nowhere to go and just go... nowhere. Because they've already put us through two bits of excrescence this year, with this third one on the way. How much more can they possibly do now that they have mined the movies they would have been making fun of - I mean ripping off whole cloth - next year?
I'd love to think that's the case, Tony--that these talentless hacks have gone as far up as they can go and are ready to come crashing back down. I fear otherwise, though--their movies are relatively inexpensive and usually have decent opening weekends, thus making back what little was spent on their terrible product and perpetuating the feces machine they call a career.
A good friend watched "Meet The Spartans" three times on DVD. Three times! He thinks it's hilarious and recommends it highly. I fear for his immortal soul.
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