Night at the Museum (2006)

Release Date: December 22, 2006 Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Directed by: Shawn Levy Produced by: Chris Columbus Stephen Sommers Bob Ducsay Written by: Ben Garant Thomas Lennon Starring: Ben Stiller Robin Williams Owen Wilson Dick Van Dyke Mickey Rooney Bill Cobbs Ricky Gervais Steve Coogan Carla Gugino

Review Coming Soon!

Epic Movie (2007)

Release Date: January 16, 2007 Distributed by: Regency Directed by: Jason Friedberg Aaron Seltzer Produced by: Paul Schiff Written by: Jason Friedberg Aaron Seltzer Starring: Kal Penn Jennifer Coolidge Adam Campbell Faune A. Chambers Jayma Mays Fred Willard Crispin Glover Tony Coz Héctor Jiménez Darrell Hammond Carmen Electra Carmen Electra Kevin McDonald George Alvarez

Epic Movie is a spoof movie. One of those films which take other films, genres, and pop culture media and pokes fun at them through unlikely scenarios, off-the-wall antics, and tongue-in-cheek humor.

There are Good spoof movies (Airplane, Blazing Saddles, Top Secret, Spaceballs).  There are Bad spoof movies (Date Movie, Spy Hard, Fatal Instinct, High School High). Sometimes, the Bad spoofs are so bad they’re Good (Scary Movie, Spies Like Us, Caveman, Robin Hood: Men in Tights).

Epic Movie is none of these.

There were three great things about this movie: the popcorn I ate, the frozen coke I drank, and the moment when I left.

Epic Movie is one of those all too common cinematic releases where the trailers and commercials are truly better than the actual film. The trailer is what drew me to go see the movie. The folks who put that trailer together should either be shot for putting ALL the best parts of the film into it, or given a raise for actually making the trailer more enjoyable than the movie. Maybe both. Everything of humor value is in that trailer.

There were a couple spots in the movie where I snickered, but nothing drew an actual laugh out of me. I kept hoping for funny stuff to happen, but it never did. Jokes that may have been funnier were never fleshed out. Gags that were barely humorous were drug out like nails across a blackboard.

There were more music video style montages and shots of writhing, scantily clad girls than there were actual gags or plot.

The writers and creators went for schlocky. They hit the target in that respect. All the special effects were cheesy, and were painstakingly made so. That is one of the few redeeming qualities about Epic Movie. They went for cheese, and stuck to that vision with a passion: the horrible animatronic Beaver, the obvious cute and plushy animal stole of the White Bitch, the potato flake snow, the agonizingly long and tedious fight scene between Aslo and Silas with their stunt fighters visibly swapping in and out with the actors. (It would have been funny if not soooooo long).

At least I hope the schlock was intentional.

The only other redeeming quality of this movie was Darrell Hammond as Captain Jack Swallows. He played an almost perfect parody of Johnny Depp’s perennial pirate.

Yes, Epic Movie has bad acting, a distinct lack of humor, and bad editting, but at least the plot sucked.

If you want to call it a plot. Thin thread indeed to stitch together so many varied movie genres and specific film ideas. More like a hastily sewn patchwork of sandpaper, burlap, and the occasional barbed wire.

To save you the torture of seeing Epic Movie, I’ll give you the Official synopsis:

The story centers on four not-so-young orphans: one raised by a curator at the Louvre, another a refugee from Mexican “libre” wrestling, the third a recent victim of snakes on her plane, and the fourth a “normal” resident of a mutant “X”-community. The hapless quartet visits a chocolate factory, where they stumble into an enchanted wardrobe that transports them to the land of Gnarnia. There they meet a flamboyant pirate captain and earnest students of wizardry – and join forces with, among others, a wise-but-horny lion to defeat the evil White Bitch of Gnarnia.

They win, of course. Decades later, the royal orphans find their way back to where they first entered Gnarnia. Then, after a long and pointless urination joke, they stumble back to the real world and their youthful bodies. One last unrelated parody later, the movie ends with a “twist”.

All four die and the audience lives happily ever after knowing (ie. hoping and praying) their deaths signal the end of this pathetic franchise.

Raivynn Rating: