Disaster Movie

DISASTER MOVIE

Directors : Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer

Year : 2008

Genre : Comedy

Rating :

 



Many people haved asked me if I could review 'Disaster Movie' because they know that to me, it is the worst motion picture ever created. Ever. Directed and written by the antichrists of filmmaking Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer; creators of 'Epic Movie', 'Meet The Spartans' and 'Date Movie' and starring z list celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Carmen Electra, 'Disaster Movie' really does push the boundaries of what the general movie going public will accept as entertainment. Relying on the audiences knowledge of popular films rather than writing any actual funny dialogue or clever set pieces, 'Disaster Movie' is nothing more than an immature finger pointing at popular culture. Referencing everything from 'Kung Fu Panda' to 'Juno', 'Enchanted' to 'No Country For Old Men', the film is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly shot and poorly edited waste of $20 million; money which could have gone to other much more worthy causes. Constantly turning up on lists of the worst films ever made and recently crowning the top of a poll by IMDB users of the worst films, 'Disaster Movie' is an indictment of the movie world, popular culture and good filmmaking.

The plot to 'Disaster Movie' is almost impossible to describe due to the lack of narrative structure or storyline. From what I could make out among the pointless parodies and immature bodily function jokes, 'Disaster Movie' tells the story of a group of people (including Juna, a parody of 'Juno' and the princess from 'Enchanted') trying to return a crystal skull back onto it's altar before the world is destroyed by comets and tornadoes. On their way, their encounter dozens of characters from random movies, who say a line or two before they are squashed by a flying cow, flattened by a meteorite or kicked in the genitals.

Friedberg and Selter have never even come close to making a remotely funny movie. Beginning their careers writing for the deeply unfunny 'Scary Movie' franchise as well as 'Spy Hard', Friedberg and Seltzer would branch out into directing in 2006 with 'Date Movie', a sloppy parody of romantic comedies, particularly 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' and 'Meet The Parents'. While critically slammed, 'Date Movie' quadrupled it's $20 million dollar budget at the box office and this encouraged the pair to make even more atrocious spoof movies based on popular movies and trends. First came 'Epic Movie', a parody of big, successful blockbusters released in 2005 and 'Meet The Spartans', the hideous 2007 disembowelling of Zack Snyder's blood drenched saga '300'. Just like 'Date Movie', both 'Epic Movie' and 'Meet The Spartans' were vicious savagely by critics, but once again, the box office takings said differen and buoyed by the financial success of these 2 monstrosities, Friedberg and Seltzer would go on to create the worst movie ever, ever made.

The acting is, as expected, atrocious. Both Kardashian and Electra were nominated at the 29th Golden Raspberry awards for their truly diabolical performances and the rest of the cast just look hopeless amongst the chaos taking place around them. Sure, the female cast are good looking, but it is as if Friedberg and Seltzer thought that putting in sexy actresses would distract male audience members away from the awful writing and non existent plot. The use of women in this way could seem to be mysogynistic and some ways 'Disaster Movie' is. But that is by far the worst of it's problems.

 One major problem with these 2 idiots is that their humour is so lowbrow and so immature that the only people who could possibly find their so-called writing funny are easily entertained young children. But of course, never ones to give the audience what they truly want or need, Friedberg and Seltzer widely decide to throw in an unhealthy amount of profanity into their films; including an ending song completely compiled of every character singing about which celebrity they have recently had sex with. The posters for 'Disaster Movie' which contain images of lookalikes of such current film icons as Hulk, Iron Man, Po from 'Kung Fu Panda' and Batman and this would suggest that the film is childfriendly. But within 10 minutes, the film quickly shows it's true colours and how foul-mouthed, immature and purely evil it truly is. Relying on laughs based on random profanities or someone being covered in some bodily fluid or another, 'Disaster Movie'  alienates it's true intended target audience, who are too young to watch the film in cinemas anyway.

As mentioned before, the main conceit of 'Disaster Movie' is that a character from a then recent movie walks into shot and someone shouts out, 'Hey, it's......'. This is nothing more than reliance on the audience having watched, or even heard of the movies they are referencing. So if for some reason, someone in the theatre doesn't know a certain person or character that is being parodied, they will immediately feel alienated. However, these random 'cameos' are so fleeting and don't serve any purpose to the plot or narrative whatsoever that they just emphasise how lazy the writing and comedy truly is in the first place. It is almost as if the directors looked at what movies could be possibly popular in 2007 and wrote them randomly into the storyline and script. They probably didn't even watch them, all they'd have to do is dress someone up in the costumes and the audiences knowledge can do the rest.

On it's release, it was of course greeted with scathing reviews and nominated for worst picture at the Razzies. Unfortunately, however despite it's hideous acting, atrocious parodies and lazy writing, 'Disaster Movie' would go on to make $34 million dollars at the worldwide box office and this would encourage Friedberg and Seltzer to make another abomination to cinema, 2010's 'Twilight' spoof 'Vampires Suck'.

Usually at the end of my reviews, I recommend films that are similar in tone so that you compare and contrast. However, today I am not going to do that because I implore you not to watch this film. It is a blight on the word 'CINEMA' and a spit in the face of every hopeful director who was denied their rights to make their visions come true, just so these morons could make this steaming pile of manure. It is monumentally bad and should never, ever have been greenlit by the producers. Shame on every single person who acted, shot, edited or distributed 'Disaster Movie'. Shame on them.