Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
How could you do this to me, IMDb Bottom 100 list? After all we’ve been through together, how could you make me sit through two Friedberg-Seltzer spoof movies in a single week? It was only last Friday that I took on #72 Meet the Spartans, and now you present me with the diarrhea duo’s previous exercise in pop culture regurgitation, Epic Movie. Look, I was patient and understanding when you made me watch two Kickboxer sequels. At least you gave me a few weeks to recover between them. But now you’ve crossed a line, IMDb Bottom 100 list. We’ll continue to do business together, but we’re no longer speaking.
The only good news is that, much like Spartans, Epic Movie barely crosses the 60 minute mark before the extended credits, complete with dance sequences and hee-larious outtakes, begin. Also, the word apparently had yet to reach the top Hollywood agencies that they would serve their clients best by destroying all query letters from Friedberg-Seltzer Industries; there are actual recognizable faces on display here in addition to the usual sort-of-look-and-sound-alikes. Kal Penn, Jennifer Coolidge, David Carradine, Crispin Glover (!) and perhaps most dishearteningly, Fred Willard, all show up and do their best to survive with their dignity intact.
The best I can say about Epic Movie is that it’s not quite as slapdash as Meet the Spartans. (I’ll dismiss the fact that it’s actually ranked higher on the list as a statistical quirk.) There’s a sort of plot, at least for a while, involving four orphans, each of whom secures a golden ticket entitling them to a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. (Wonka is played by Glover, doing a twitchy but uninspired take on Johnny Depp’s version.) Wonka takes the orphans prisoner in order to use their organs as the secret ingredient in his candy, but they escape through the wardrobe into Gnarnia. (The ‘G’ is what makes it a parody, right up there with those Cracked issues of the mid-70s featuring “The Fonze.”) There they battle The White Bitch (Coolidge), enlist the aid of Captain Jack Swallows, and get Punk’d by an Ashton Kutcher-alike in a trucker hat.
There are fleeting indications in Epic Movie that Friedberg and Seltzer have some dim awareness that making a pop culture joke involves putting some sort of twist on that which is familiar. For instance, turning the Mutant Academy into a high school where the X-Men are the cool kids is an amusing notion. Turning the Da Vinci Code phrase “So dark the con of man” into “So lame the hair of Tom” as a poke at the follicular follies of Tom Hanks in that particular movie – that’s moderately chuckle-worthy. Having the characters break into hip-hop musical numbers every ten minutes, however, is not funny. It’s not funny the first time, it’s not funny the fourth time, and it only calls attention to the fact that you’re desperate to pump up the running time.
There are indications that the game is up for our friends Iceberg and Salsa. (See what I did there? I spoofed ‘em! I spoofed ‘em good!) Their latest atrocity Disaster Movie did not approach the box office success of its predecessors, and it became the first movie ever to score a perfect 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Now that’s funny.
Previously on Unwatchable:
71. Gigli
72. Meet the Spartans
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign