I told them. I told them both.
"We have three free rentals from Blockbuster, " I said. "Yes, it's Tuesday, and that means new releases. But," I concluded, "you do not want me to get Epic Movie."
But I was outnumbered two to one. Overruled. I should have said something. I should have just not wasted a perfectly good free rental. But alas, I care too much about my wife and my brother. So I rented Epic Movie. The "unrated" DVD (more on this subject to come later today) had a 93-minute running time, some six minutes longer than the theatrical release. I hoped it was funny. If not, it was only an hour and a half - a pretty short movie considering some of the epics I've seen.
And that was just the first thing wrong with the movie. If you're going to make a spoof (and this one is a spoof, not an homage) about epic movies, you should probably try and mimic the epic movies you're making fun of. The Lord of the Rings trilogy ran about ten hours, and that's not including all the extra scenes you get on the extended cuts. If Epic Movie ran ten hours, I would have shot myself. Or choked on my own vomit.
It doen't even make fun of epic movies. Here is a brief list of movies that Epic Movie spoofs:
The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe); Pirates of the Carribean; Superman Returns; Harry Potter; various MTV shows/styles (i.e. Cribs, rap music videos).
And here is a list of movies that might be considered epic:
The Chronicles of Narnia; Troy; Lord of the Rings; The New World; Apocalypto; I might even throw in Star Wars.
Please note that the only film listed in my Epic Movies list as well as my Epic Movie list is Chronicles of Narnia. So here's the joke from the movie - They stumble through a mysterious wardrobe to find a land called Gnarnia.
"The G is silent," says Lucy.
"For legal purposes," says Mr. Tumnus.
To follow the pattern here, I'll ape South Park and say, "SIMPSONS DID IT!!!"
The movie is rife with these kinds of jokes. Every single one of them falls flat on its face like a skateboarder or a gymnast tyring to perform stunts on a planet with three times Earth's gravitational pull. Only watching skateboarders or gymnasts do that would be the more enjoyable experience.
For the first time in my life, I've seen fart jokes fail to make me or my brother laugh. It's because we were expecting them. Other jokes that keel over like a drunken frat boy: vomit gags abound (pun intended); Lucy says everything the black chick says over and over and over again; apparently (and I didn't know this before), rap songs become funny when they are performed by pirates or Crispin Glover.
I have a hard time believing anybody read this script before deciding to make the movie. I guess there was enough there to market, enough interest in the movies it parodies, to be given release without much thought as to quality.
Don't watch this movie. Even though I said it was only ninety-three minutes, that's still ninety-three minutes I could have spent watching the other two movies I rented - Se7en and Pieces of April. Hopefully, you should be hearing about those two soon, and hopefully they'll be better reviewed.
(For the record, I have seen Se7en twice, but it's been a very long time since the last time I watched it. I need to watch it again to be able to give it a fair review.)