Review: ‘Disaster Movie’

Travis:

Here’s the short version… ‘Disaster Movie’ is, wait… wait for it… A DISASTER !!! Surprised?

Friedberg and Seltzer ought to come to the vivid and painfully true realization that they are completely and totally out of steam, at least in the parody movie genre. There comes a time when every man must accept that he must either adapt to survive or else suffer an agonizing and excruciating extinction forever. Guys, if you can’t make a “real” movie then maybe this filmmaking thing is not for you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue your dreams, but… for God’s sake, please tell me making a movie as horribly bad as this is NOT your dream come true! Your walking a fine line dudes. Uwe Boll is starting to look good. That’s NOT a compliment!

You’ll probably notice that we’re not talking a lot about the plot of ‘Disaster Movie’… that’s because there is NONE! Oh sure, it’s a spoof movie. There’s no need for a plot. [ahem] That rule only applies if the movie is actually funny. I fear the days of ‘Blazing Saddles’, ‘Amazon Women on the Moon’, ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Naked Gun’ are long behind us. How I long to laugh at a good parody. Anyone seen one lately? I find it difficult to even call this movie by it’s real title… ‘Disaster Movie’. There are more comic book movie references here than there are disaster movie references. It should have been titled ‘Superhero Movie 2’, but it still would have absolutely sucked.

Honestly, my friends… there’s nearly nothing good to say about this movie. I rarely come right and and say “DON’T SEE THIS” but I am severely tempted. The jokes are not funny, the gags are lame and the incredibly annoying unfunny crap in this film is made even worse because the filmmakers chose to hammer the laugh-less bits into the ground, squeezing and grinding and bludgeoning them until there’s nothing left. That’s actually rather impressive since they was nothing there  to begin with. I could even see how a few [few=1-2, maybe] of the comedic bits may have been funny if they weren’t played to death, such as the crazy crackhead princess prostitute or the evil rabid Alvin and the Chipmunks. The worst offender was the Hannah Montana bit that just  wouldn’t end and not a single person in the theater laughed, not once. The Juno bit wasn’t funny to begin with and that dung heap lasted more than half of the film. The worst strike against these guy’s movie mojo was perhaps their biggest offense… that being the Michael Jackson gag. Hello, this has been done, what… 473 times now? Stop! Whatever humor there was in stabbing at Michael Jackson, his monkey and the little boys expired like unrefrigerated ham salad about 10 years ago.

To the readers, I greatly apologize for this onslaught of negativity. Normally, I make an effort to find the silver lining in most films but this one is laden with tarnished fool’s gold at best. I consider it my duty to encourage viewers to decide for themselves, but I also feel obliged to forewarn moviegoers of potential mental health risks and this puppy hits RED level, or whatever the highest level of the stinking Homeland Security alert is anymore. Feel free to see for yourself, but enter at your own risk.

[rating:0.25/5]

Ram Man:

Disaster Movie…The title speaks for itself! I don’t mind a parody movie, IF IT’S FUNNY. Scary Movie,  Date Movie and Not Another Teen Movie were funny, but the recent group of “spoof” movies (Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans,Superhero Movie) have no direction, story and they aren’t funny. I did try to go into this film with an open mind, but 20 minutes in  I thought I was in a library not a movie theater.

Disaster Movie is about the end of the world happening on …TODAY, August 29TH, 2008..the same date this movie opens! It makes fun of the following films: 10,000 BC (this was horrible on it’s own!), JUNO (a 35 yr. old pregnant high schooler), Cloverfield (but there’s no monster), High School Musical, Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and we have appearances by the Summer’s Movie Superstars: The Dark Knight, Ironman, the Hulk and Hellboy. I would normally give you the basis of the film here, but as I said it doesn’t have one. This is 90 minutes of bad Mad TV sketches smashed together with a bunch of no name actors. Is it all bad…no. There were three…yes, three things I took away from this. 1. The wrestle-royal match between Carmen Electra and Kim Kardashian that allowed them to show off their finest assests: their cleavage! 2. The zombie, flesh eating, Alvin and the Chipmunks, I did enjoy them eating the faux-Juno girl…because she would then not return in the film! and 3. The princess from Enchanted who  turned out  to be  a slut who slept with most of the cast had a few humorous lines. But the crowd wasn’t laughing. I had a chuckle when I started the count of people leaving the film after they had enough (30 mins in).

Disaster movie is a vile waste of time and money. As I exited the film I equated this film to a 90 minute lobotomy….you will leave this film dumber than when you went in. I think if they showed this to terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay they would turn over Bin Laden just to make them turn off the movie! Here it is in black and white: if you pay to see these movies, no matter how bad they are, they are going to keep making them! Let your voice be heard through the tickets sales, avoid Disaster Movie like the Cancer it is. Maybe then Jason Friedberg will get the clue and stop making them!

[rating: 0/5]

Jeremy:

Last week, ‘Hamlet 2’ had a lead character who felt that it didn’t matter how much talent you had as long as whatever you do, you do with excitement. He felt that would be enough. I would almost say that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the writers and directors behind ‘Disaster Movie’, live by that rule. ‘Hamlet 2’ was being satirical when it brought up that point. ‘Disaster Movie’, as well as the duo’s previous films, ‘Scary Movie’, ‘Date Movie’, ‘Epic Movie’, and ‘Meet the Spartans’, are all films that treat that idea as if it were holy scripture. For them, it doesn’t matter how many times you see Hannah Montana get crushed by a meteor, or something to that effect, the audience will keep coming back.

To serious sit down and review ‘Disaster Movie’ is a bit like trying to put on socks over shoes. It’s really dumb. It’s really pointless. You’re not going to convince others to go along with you. You know, all of you, whether or not you are going to throw down your hard-earned cash to see this movie. It is completely pointless for me, or anyone, for that matter, to sit here and tell you you would be better off watching your money float down a gutter than spend it on this movie. It would be a waste of my time to tell you standing in front of a brick wall and repeatedly bashing your head into it until all the blood as drained from your eyes and you go blind would serve a greater purpose than seeing this movie. There are a countless number of ways to explain just how mind-numbingly idiotic this film really is. And not even the film, itself, is as idiotic as the notion that, brace yourself, $25 million was spent to come up with this screenplay, hire these actors, and put this film together.

Let’s look at that figure. $25 million dollars. Now, let’s look back at some films that have been released in recent years. ‘Memento’ cost $9 million. ‘Pulp Fiction’ cost $8 million. ‘Clerks’ cost a whopping $27,000. That’s a grand total of $17.023 million. Adjust for inflation, and you still haven’t covered the costs of ‘Disaster Movie’. Those are resources that could have been spent in far better ways, like, teaching sewer rats how to yodel, for instance.

To be perfectly frank, I just realized I’m only entertaining myself right now. I haven’t even gone into any details about the movie, and why should I? You look back at Friedberg and Seltzer’s three previous movies, and you see that, combined, all three have profited over $55 million. You know the freight train of insultingly bad comedies is just going to keep on coming.

So, let’s get down to the film, itself.

‘Disaster Movie’.

Is there one, single, entertaining moment in the entire movie? I could go on about how there are two moments in the entire film that are genuinely funny. Then, I could go on about how those moments are squandered, because the writers, realizing they’ve struck gold, decide to grind those moments into the ground until you can’t even see back far enough to see where they were funny in the first place.

Confused? How about a caveman fighting The Wolf from American Gladiators only to stumble upon Amy Winehouse who proceeds to pull a crystal skull from out of her hair. That’s the first ten minutes. My ears are now bleeding from having to recollect all of that.

In the last month, we’ve had ‘Step Brothers’, ‘Pineapple Express’, ‘Tropic Thunder’, ‘The Rocker’, and ‘Hamlet 2’. That is a list of five movies released in just the last 40 days that are exponentially funnier than ‘Disaster Movie’. Was anything else expected? Well, no. Is there any way any bad reviews or any bad word of mouth is going to keep this movie from making every nickel it was going to make anyway? Probably not. So, if you were planning on seeing it, go for it. You’ve probably stopped reading a long time ago. See it or not, it’s not going to stall the inevitable release of ‘Sci-fi Movie’ one bit.

[rating:0/5]