Some things can be blamed on moviegoers. Nobody puts a gun to their head and forces them to spend money on movie tickets to every parody to come along. The opening weeekend grosses for Epic Movie makes you wonder why they did come considering this is a movie from the people who brought us Date Movie less than a year ago.
Date Movie was a movie spoof of recent romantic comedies that gave up its best laughs in the trailer as most bad comedies do. Being profitable, it would figure another spoof would follow but I expected audiences would stay away. Unfortunately for them, they didn't.
Expectations weren't high after Date Movie but at least that film was consistent in making fun of comedies. Epic Movie is all over the map when it comes to blasting hit films. But it screws up by making fun of films that weren't epic or even hits. Snakes on a Plane must have not been a big disappointment until they had filmed the opening scenes. At the same time, this wasn't the type of film to fall under what should be considered Epic. Nor are Nacho Libre, Borat, or Click. Where's take-offs on Gladiator, Troy, The Last Samurai, or any other film clocking in at nearly three hours? This film barely makes it to eighty minutes and ran out of steam a long time before that despite plenty of rich material to use besides Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and The Chronicles of Narnia. In fairness, their target audience is a young demographic that might miss a clever Gone With the Wind or even Titanic reference. But the best spoofs such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun stuck to making fun of good films or films audiences actually saw when it did make a mockery of something; hence, people might get the jokes.
But the biggest crime the filmmakers commit besides ignoring their premise is the lack of making it funny. Up for P. Diddy and Michael Jackson jokes? That should tell you how stale everything in this is. Even a talented cast including Crispin Glover, Kal Penn, Jennifer Coolidge, and Tony Cox seem to be straining to find laughs in the material; only Darrell Hammond as "Jack Swallows" seems to have a grasp on his character and making it is his own (I honestly didn't realize it was Hammond). Unfortuntely, his part is more of a cameo than being a featured player (except in the ads).
Imagine how much better this film would have been if it spoofed the plot of a Pirates Of the Caribbean movie with Jack Swallows as our protagonist. It is time SNL vet Hammond gets a starring role; even Tim Meadows got a shot. That said, even the despicable The Ladies Man was less painful than Epic Movie. As is pulling hair out of your head.