Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Richard Dawkins is right. There almost certainly is no God. Only in a Godless universe could Epic Movie become the top-grossing movie at the box office. Granted, this is during the early year deadlands, where neither Oscar contenders nor summer blockbusters dare premiere, and the movie going public becomes easy prey for these cinematic disasters.

I saw last year’s Date Movie, which like Epic Movie, was written and directed by Jason Freidberg and Aaron Seltzer. I originally referred to them as a “team”, but “unholy alliance” feels much more appropriate. Date Movie is the least funny thing (I hesitate to call it a movie) I have ever had to sit through, and I’ve been through invasive surgery. The thing was revolting, graceless, and an insult to the very concept of humor. It’s like paint-by-numbers for comedy, with everything colored in bodily fluids. Seriously, how do you waste Alyson Hannigan like that? The woman could make the phone book funny, and instead you slap an exploding zit on her. Hilarious.

Freidberg and Seltzer are the least talented couple of puerile hacks to ever scrawl words onto rolling papers and call it a script. Look at their resumes. It’s the same thing eight times over. The fact that they keep getting work speaks less to the nonexistence of God and more to the reality of Satan.

The Movie movies are allegedly spoofs in the same vein as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Airplane! I’m sure that if Freidberg and Seltzer had their way, these films would be retitled Cowboy Movie, Monster Movie, and Disaster Movie, respectively. Are you reading this, Marlon Wayans? Because I am clearly just as comedicly talented as these two drug addicts. Hire me. Even Spaceballs, which in retrospect is probably Mel Brooks’s worst movie, is a thousand times funnier than anything Freidberg and Seltzer will ever write or think.

A good spoof has to have some staying power. Blazing Saddles is as much a Western spoof as it is a commentary on mid-1970s race relations. Young Frankenstein is so good that it actually manages to stand as a classic on its own. Even Scary Movie got it right the first time around—it was a parody of the genre as well as the audience that kept turning out to watch it. The thing about the more recent crop of spoofs from the Wayans school is that they’re meta-derivative. More than working off the materials they claim to parody, they’ve developed a sort of grammar unto themselves, a nonstop parade of unfunny in-jokes that you could only understand if you happened to be smoking the same joint that Seltzer was when he wrote the script. Epic Movie could have been something really fantastic, but clearly it isn’t. This is a film thing that draws its influences from the most recent and most fleeting popular material available. What in God’s name is a Borat parody doing in there? The whole thing will look sadly dated less than a year from now, a weird time capsule not of the genre, or even the 00s, but of 2006. A graceless, stupid time capsule at that.

While we’re here, check out the quotes from Paul Dergarabedian. Can someone explain to me who this man is, and why the AP calls him every week? From the CNN link:

“It seems these teen audiences have just this insatiable appetite for these spoofs.”

Referring to Smokin’ Aces: “It’s a very edgy, R-rated, hip and cool movie. It doesn’t surprise me.”

Paul, how old are you, exactly? You seem to regard teenagers with the same confused curiosity that evolutionary biologists have for the duck-billed platypus. Next thing you know, you’ll be talking about how it’s probably a reflection of the Youtubes and all the kids on the Myspace. Then again, maybe the fact that I’m incapable of enjoying Date Movie and Epic Movie is a sign that I, too, am becoming an old, grouchy sack of gruel. Probably not, though.