Tedious Pastiche Of Recycled Jokes

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday February 23, 2006

GLEN HUMPHRIES

DATE MOVIE (M)

Stars: Alyson Hannigan, Adam Campbell,

Eddie Griffin, Sophie Monk.

Directors: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Screening at Hoyts Warrawong and

Greater Union Shellharbour

If you take a date to see this film, chances are remarkably high you'll never see that person again. He or she will think you're an idiot.

Date Movie is promoted as being written by two of the six writers of Scary Movie. It's obvious they can't work without the other four.

Either that or the pair decided on an unusual experiment - trying to make a comedy that wasn't funny. Surely they couldn't have thought anything in this film was remotely amusing.

Why did the studio let them make it? Maybe it was the same reason Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo was made; because they think audiences are morons.

I've got nothing against the throwaway-joke genre. I still find films like Flying High and Top Secret hilarious. ("I know a little German, there he is over there.")

But those films make their own jokes. Date Movie just recycles gags from other films. It doesn't take them to a new level, it just copies them. Meet The Parents had a cat that uses the toilet, let's have one too. My Big Fat Greek Wedding had a dad who used Windex for everything, let's do that. 40-Year-Old Virgin had a waxing scene. Make sure we have one too.

The writers don't do anything new with those scenes, they just add them. Perhaps they thought, "If we take scenes from other funny movies and put them in our movie, it'll be funny too". Nope, doesn't work.

Additionally, there are inappropriate movie parodies. If this is about date movies, why are there references to Napoleon Dynamite, Dodgeball, Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill and TV's The Bachelor?

And they have a character based on J.Lo, but they call her Jello. Did you see what they did there? Oh, and she has a big butt. Oh God, my sides have split from laughing. Not.

There's no point in detailing the plot because there isn't one. Nor is is worth running through the actors because most of them will be removing this from their CV quick-smart.

© 2006 Illawarra Mercury

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