Review: Disaster Movie

In “Cloverfield”-like fashion, Matt Lanter is trying to get to his girlfriend Vanessa Minnillo whilst a whole series of natural disasters hit. Along the way, he and his best buddy (a supposedly comedic entity known as ‘G-Thang’) encounter all manner of crazy pop-culture send-ups (diminutive Tony Cox playing Indiana Jones, Crista Flanagan doing “Juno”), caricatures, and has-beens/attention whores.

This 2008 wannabe funny spoof from the deadly writing-directorial duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer is pretty abysmal, even by their own awful standards (“Meet the Spartans” being one such Friedberg-Seltzer abomination that springs to mind). There are even fewer positives here than in most of these flicks, but I cannot deny laughing heartily at the insane rabid “Alvin and the Chipmunks” doing death metal. That was hilarious. The parodies of “Juno” (I lasted less than 10 minutes into that annoying, snarky, smug film) and Sarah Jessica Parker, whilst not funny exactly, appealed to me because I feel the same way about those two as the filmmakers obviously do (I used to like SJP, though from her “L.A. Story” period and prior to that). The scene of “Juno” break-dancing almost made me laugh, to the film’s credit. Whilst I find both to be a waste of space, the idea of a wrestling match between attention whores Kim Kardashian and Carmen Electra has a certain trashy, perverse appeal, even though it doesn’t result in laughter.

That’s it for the niceties, I’m afraid. I mean, the film is called “Disaster Movie”, and the basic narrative frame is sorta lifted from “Cloverfield” (but without any humorous or ironic statement being made about it), the film spends about 90% of the time making fun of things totally unrelated to disaster movies. We also get parodies of random then-recent films, apparently several of which weren’t even released when this was made, so obviously the parodies were of their trailers! What the hell?. I know the initial disaster movie cycle was over in the early 80s, and there are a couple of disaster movies referenced here both old and recent. However, why all the totally unrelated, instantly dated pop culture references? The ‘I’m Fucking Matt Damon’ parody-of-a-parody comes to mind. Yes, even in 2018 people still remember that thing, but not that many, and probably only slightly more people when this film was made. A lot of the movies parodied here (“High School Musical”, “Enchanted”- which is agonisingly dwelled on here, “Step it Up 2” etc.) are ones I haven’t seen and in all likelihood, won’t see. The “High School Musical” parody in particular is awful and over-extended, I couldn’t even understand most of the (presumably dirty and intentionally funny) lyrics it was so badly done. The films it does parody that I have seen like “Beowulf” (given a homophobic and foolish treatment) and “Kung Fu Panda” are given shoddy treatment.

The impersonations, especially those by “Mad TV” comedienne Nicole Ari Parker are especially bad, like her Amy Winehouse, but there’s also some terrible impersonations of JT and Anton Chiguhr that wouldn’t even make it past a script reading session at “SNL”. And don’t even get me started on Mr. “G-Thang”, whose character in this film is entirely without point, and at no point raised a smile from me. However, the big thing that bugs me about this film, and all of these “Movie” flicks is their insulting attitude towards the (admittedly compliant) audience. These guys aren’t dumb, they know that they’ve made a film called “Disaster Movie” without including many disaster movie spoofs. They clearly don’t care. Spoofs in the ZAZ era (“The Naked Gun!”, “Hot Shots!”, “Top Secret!” to name but a few) were more than just a series of movie spoofs lined up in any old order. They had storylines, characters, and usually a lot of laughs. They were made with care and love, and yes, monetary gain. This film was made for money solely. I’m not one to rag on these films for simply accurately repeating/restaging movie scenes to elicit laughter as some indeed have criticised them for, after all “Jane Austen’s Mafia!” I felt was a sorely underrated example of what these films could and should be in that regard (the re-enactments/spoofs in that were often very funny). I will however, rag on this film for being almost entirely unfunny, instantly irrelevant (despite my giving it relevance in reviewing it, I suppose), and not even bothering to be all that accurate in the spoof scenes.

These repugnant excuses for films need to end, even the better ones (well, “Superhero Movie”- not made by these guys and “Epic Movie” weren’t awful) are still pretty average at best. This one’s well below even that modest result. Pitiful and insulting.

Rating: D