I confess, I knew when I grabbed a copy of Disaster Movie off the shelf at the local video store (yes, I still use the local video store from time to time) that I was probably in for a truly stupid ride. After all, I’d seen Date Movie. I’d seen Epic Movie. I knew what I was in for.
What I thought I was in for was a cheesy plot that made little sense with a quantity of movie parodies thrown in throughout. I got the cheesy plot in spades–a group of attractive twentysomethings are having a party when they’re besieged by a series of natural disasters. What will follow is a series of half-baked movie parodies until they can figure out the cause of the natural disasters and fix it.
And yet, I really didn’t. I really had no idea what I was in for. For example, I had no idea I was in for quite this quantity of Mad TV alumns.
Like Ike Barinholtz. Mad TV fans–all eight of us–might well remember the comedian from his various roles on that show. And he’s all over Disaster Movie. He’s got like seven, eight parts that I can remember off the top of my head. Nicole Parker’s also in on this with three roles. Same with Crista Flanagan at two roles. I’m amazed they didn’t trot Michael McDonald out in the Speedo for a round of “Look what I can do!”
I also had no idea that they could fit quite so many movie parodies into one movie. Disaster Movie really isn’t so much a movie as it is a kind of experiment to see just how many movies can be parodied in a single movie without the audience getting up and walking out. I think the count is somewhere around fifteen or so. When a movie can allocate five whole percent of the first ten minutes of a movie to an Amy Winehouse look-a-like (Nicole Parker in her first of three roles) belching and generating wind strong enough to rattle a caveman’s dreadlocks, you know they’re not concerned about things like “character development” or “a strong, coherent plotline”.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t some fun to be had in Disaster Movie. It’s not so much funny as it is patently ludicrous. A twenty five year old man having a super duper sweet sixteen party because he never had one? Ludicrous! His girlfriend cheating on him with Flava Flav, a midget named Jojo and a Calvin Klein model in the space of ten minutes? Ludicrous! Kim Kardashian actually having a speaking role in a movie? Ludicrous! Okay, maybe that last one’s not quite so ludicrous. She actually got top billing on the video box, and that should’ve been the clearest sign something was gravely wrong here.
But you’ve got to hand it to these guys–they tried. Man, did they try. They probably tried TOO hard, in fact. You’ve got Alvin and the Chipmunks recast as some kind of rabid psychopaths, and the last five minutes are devoted to a musical number that’s just…well…ludicrous.
Actually, that’s probably the best way to describe the whole movie. Ludicrous. Laughably unrealistic, for those who don’t want to go digging out the dictionary. It’s so wildly over the top that the top can no longer see it with the naked eye. This may not make for a classic comedy romp, but it will make for a few cheap laughs. And at the end of the day, is that really so bad?
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It is now entirely possible that, for the first time since the inception of the Oscars, fully FIVE FILMS could stand for Best Animated Feature.
Today’s first bit of horrific news comes 