Review: Movie 43

Awful screenwriter Dennis Quaid tries to pitch a bunch of terrible script ideas for studio exec Greg Kinnear. These sketches include a guy with testicles on their neck (Hugh Jackman) on a date with a woman (Kate Winslet) trying not to notice, parents (Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber) home-schooling their son (Jeremy Allen White) in the most inappropriate manner possible, a guy (Chris Pratt) wanting to propose to his girl (Anna Faris) and finding out that she gets turned on by faecal matter literally being dumped on her, Batman (Jason Sudeikis) and Robin (Justin Long) bickering on a speed date with Lois Lane (Uma Thurman), A teenage girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) has her period and freaks out her boyfriend (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and his dad (Patrick Warburton), two losers (Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville) torture a seriously bad-tempered leprechaun (Gerard Butler) into giving them his pot of gold, a game of Truth or Dare on a date between Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant, and an African-American basketball coach (Terrence Howard) doesn’t bother pumping his team up because they’re black and the opposition are white.

 

No amount of warning from me is going to deter you from seeing this 2013 all-star descent into scatology. I read plenty of bad press myself before watching the film. It can’t be that bad can it? Yes, indeed it can, and yes indeed it is. A slew of directors, writers, and stars have combined to basically act out the infamous Aristocrats joke (mythologised in the often amusing, but seriously wrong documentary “The Aristocrats”) over the course of several skits and 90 long, long minutes. The result is a true embarrassment to all involved, including several Oscar nominees and Oscar winners who presumably have a massive dirt file on them that someone involved in the production got a hold of.

 

The wraparound directed by Peter Farrelly (one half of the team behind “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber”) with Dennis Quaid pitching a whole bunch of bad ideas to Greg Kinnear is bad enough (and the wrong Quaid was cast), but the sketches themselves are appalling, and without the star power would look like “National Lampoon’s Dirty Movie” (which is a real movie, by the way. A really bad one too). The first sketch is particularly horrendous and made me think a little bit less of Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet to be honest. Hugh Jackman has balls on his neck. That’s the gag. Apparently. It’s not remotely funny because there’s absolutely no reality to it. Only a five year-old would find that funny, and five year-olds are idiots whose opinions don’t matter. Do I need to tell you that Farrelly directed this too? The writers were Rocky Russo and Jeremy Sosenko who are presumably working on half a brain between them. Compare that to the opening twenty minutes of “There’s Something About Mary” (the only funny part of that film), where the humour was derived from plausible, if unlikely and embarrassing truths. A guy really could get his scrotum caught in a zipper. But a guy with testicles on his neck? What an awful start to the film.

 

The next sketch involves real-life couple Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber and is the kind of thing that would be funny if told as a joke, but acted out it’s just embarrassing for the actors to enact. The parents teasing and bullying their own son like jocks in high school is funny, but after that they take it way, way too far and I’m sorry, but incest is only funny in “National Lampoon’s Vacation”. This segment was directed and co-written by Will Graham (whose background on “The Onion News Network” says everything), along with co-writer Jack Kuroda.

 

Meanwhile, the biggest problem with the Chris Pratt/Anna Faris segment isn’t that she wants him to shit all over her. No, it’s that you can see the joke coming from a mile away...and it’s that she wants him to shit all over her. I like scatological humour, but this film is just plain weird, and more importantly, botched and unfunny. John Waters knew how to do this right with his underrated “A Dirty Shame” (not to mention “Pink Flamingos”), but director Steve Carr (“Daddy Day Care”, “Doctor Doolittle 2”) and writers Rocky Russo & Jeremy Sosenko (again?) botch it.

 

The Emma Stone/Kieran Culkin segment was dead to me the moment Stone seems to know “The Golden Girls” but thinks Dorothy is the slutty one. Fuck off, Emma Stone has never even heard of “The Golden Girls”. Don’t lie to me, writer Matthew Portenoy. The segment as a whole is poorly written and pointless, I just didn’t get it. Griffin Dunne (the only good thing in “An American Werewolf in London”) of all people directed it, reminding me that he was the guy with the talking penis in “Me and Him”, and thus no ‘perfect stranger’ to bad comedy (nor am I, to be fair).

 

Up next is “Gotham Speed Dating”, which as the title suggests is a collection of superheroes in really bad knock-off costumes (to avoid copyright?), and...apparently superhero sex jokes are meant to be inherently funny. Directed by James Duffy and written by Will Carlough, it’d be funny perhaps if Justin Long and Jason Sudeikis’ Batman and Robin were gay, but the Aussie TV sketch show “Fast Forward” already hilariously played that up back in the 80s. The decision to not cast Emma Stone as Lois Lane was an oversight I thought. The sketch is dumb, apparently based on an earlier short by the newbie director.

 

And then Richard Gere turns up and everyone expects gerbil jokes, right? No, instead he’s given a lame ad agency skit from director Steven Brill (who made the underrated “Little Nicky”). Next.

 

Chloe Grace Moretz gets her period and apparently it’s freaky and hilarious. I don’t think it’s either. It’s normal, and a bit embarrassing. This sketch was clearly written by someone with a deep fear and hatred of women. And yet it was directed by Elizabeth Banks, who is a woman, and apparently a director now (?) and written by a woman, too, in Elizabeth Shapiro. OK so maybe it had to be written by a man, or a woman named Elizabeth. It also wastes Puddy (Patrick Warburton) and McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

 

You’ll be shocked to find Seth McFarlane turning up in the next bit as we return to Kinnear and Quaid, who sports a (now outdated) Bieber haircut that is probably meant to be funny but just reminds me that it’s usually a bad idea to make fun of cultural icons of the day’s youth, who will move on to something else in a heartbeat and render that icon (and any jokes about it) useless and obsolete.

 

Perhaps the most inexplicable segment of all features Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville being berated by a miniaturised Gerard Butler as a foul-mouthed, agro leprechaun. Why would anyone even come up with that idea? Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour”) should never work again after directing this segment which was written by a presumably drunk Jacob Fleisher. After that, we are back to Farrelly territory and witness to yet another appalling career choice from Halle Berry as she enacts a juvenile game of Truth or Dare that isn’t even interesting or shocking, thanks to the lack of ingenuity by writer Greg Pritkin. Snooki’s in it, though, and we all know Snooki is still a thing, right? At least we know that Bobby Farrelly’s the smart one in the family, for staying well away from this film.

 

The final sketch of the film proper has Terrence Howard wishing he didn’t piss off Robert Downey Jr. and fuck up his entire career. Or alternatively, he plays a coach of a black basketball team. It’s one big black stereotype joke. Without the joke. Or a point. Director Rusty Cundieff and writers Rocky Russo & Jeremy Sosenko (fuck these guys, seriously) waste everyone’s time. During the end credits we get one last sketch from writer-director James Gunn (writer of the wonderful “Tromeo and Juliet”, writer-director of the overrated “Slither”) involving Banks and Josh Duhamel. And a poorly animated scatologically-minded cat named Beezel. “Fritz the Cat” it ain’t, but Duhamel deserves marks for trying his best.

 

Sorry, but this is one of the worst films I’ve seen in ages, and the only reason why it’s not the worst film of 2013 I’ve seen so far (admittedly I haven’t seen that many so far. I catch most films on cable because I’m lazy) is because “21 & Over” is unspeakably worse. This is an embarrassment to one and all, though I’m sure everyone thought at the time it’d be a lot of fun. That’s the problem when the film is made over a four year period to fit in with the various’ stars and director’s schedules. Ah hell, that’s no excuse, it’s just fucking terrible because it’s fucking terribly made. One laugh in the entire film, that’s it.

 

Rating: D+