Released: January 26, 2007
Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer
*****
The spoof is a very hard thing to pull off: too often they devolve from audience-friendly riffs on popular movies to over the top, campy and ultimately unfunny endeavors trying to pack as many references to other films into a running time as possible. Spaceballs and Blazing Saddles make very well be the best movie spoofs of all time. Why? Both tend to be smarter than normal spoof films and, while going for the lowest common denominator, they never cross that line. Epic Movie can't say the same. It crosses the line, can't be shown to a family audience and comes across are nothing more than mean spirited, not to mention devoid of any real creativity.
A plot synopsis would be foolish, as would be a list of the movies spoofed in Epic Movie. Let's just say the plot resembles The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, showcasing three teenagers who find their way into Gnarnia via a wardrobe while hiding from Willy Wonka in his factory. Orphans all, one comes from a monastery (Nacho Libre); another via an infested plane (Snakes on a Plane); a third from a Paris museum (The DaVinci Code); and the last a normal kid living in a mutant society (X-Men). In Gnarnia, they are forced into fighting the White Bitch.
Almost by definition, a spoof is supposed to be stupid, low brow humor. But it need not be moronic, sophomoric and pandering, to boot. Jokes and gags are repeated ad nauseum because the writers apparently think the audience didn't get it the first time (Captain Jack Swallows, anyone?) while visual gags which are cringe worthy (the WB sucking on one of the orphans' fingers until it throbs...) are beaten until they're not funny-as if they ever were. Spaceballs might be stupid, but at the very least it isn't overly sexual, either. Around every corner is another callous sex joke inserted not because it's funny, but because it's easy.
There's nothing remotely original here. Not the "romance" between Mr. Tumnus and Harry Beaver; not the way every movie with a box office over $50 million is mashed together to form the "story"' not with the horrible acting by all the leads-including Kal Penn; and not with the cameos by Fred Willard, Darrell Hammond, Carmen Electra and David Carradine. Epic Movie has more in common with the similarly sex-obsessed and light weight Scary Movie franchise than it does with any of the best spoofs in history. It's not incompetent film making, just uninspired and entirely too "safe."