Sunday, March 30, 2008

Super Zero

One of the signs of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So what does that say about people who keep making these parody movies? You have Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, both occasionally funny but ultimately mediocre movies. One of the guys who wrote both of those movies is now writing and directing Superhero Movie, the imaginatively named parody of movies like Spider-Man and X-Men. How is it that the people who authorize and pay for these things figured that they'd get something other than an occasionally funny but ultimately mediocre movie this time around? My theory is they simply didn't give a crap because both of the Scary Movies made at least a small profit and, seen from a perspective of sanity, this one will also make at least enough money to justify making Fantasy Movie or Jane Austen Movie next year. At least I hope that my cynical theory is true. I'd hate to think that the producers of Superhero Movie made this thinking, "Yes! Yes! This will be one of the great classics of cinema and will be how people remember me when I'm dead."

I will say this is a small cut above other parody attempts like Epic Movie or Date Movie. I never saw Meet The Spartans but I'm assuming this is better than that because I can't imagine a movie containing break dancing Spartans could cause you to feel anything but pain. There hasn't been a truly great parody film since the last Naked Gun movie. I liked Dewey Cox a little but it still wasn't in the same league. It may seem odd that so few of these are any good since so many of them are made. The reason for this is simple. Comedy, to look good, must look like it was easy to do. This goes doubly so for parodies. A good parody like Naked Gun or Young Frankenstein looks almost disgustingly easy to make. I imagine that many filmmakers of below average talent see a good one and think, "That's it! I'll just make fun of all those Harry Potter movies, throw in some dick and fart jokes and maybe have a Donald Trump look-alike come along and tell everybody that they're fired. How could that not be comedy gold?" The fact that they don't recognize the buttload of ways in which this could not be comedy gold is why so many bad parodies are made.

There's a good example of this in Superhero Movie. There's a scene where the nebbishy alter ego of the super hero is trying to romance the girl he likes when the boy's sleeping aunt begins farting. The good news is that this starts off funny and stay that way for about 12 seconds. The bad news is that the whole routine goes on for about 3 minutes as the anal gas is is expelled with greater and greater force, eventually blowing the girl's hair around. The reason this isn't funny is because you ask yourself, "Why don't they just move to a different spot?" Makers of parody movies think they can get away with stuff like this because absurd and outrageous situations and behavior and suspension of disbelief isn't as necessary as it is when you're trying to tell a story logically but incompetent filmmakers violate even those oh-so-minor limits and that's what happened here.

The plot is more a take-off on the first Spider-Man movie than it is superhero movies in general and you know what? I'm not even going to talk about the plot anymore since it's not really all that important. It exists as a clothesline on which to hang various jokes and sight gags.

When broken down, about 25% of the jokes in Superhero Movie work and the rest blow so, stay the hell away from it and sit back until the next crappy parody movie comes out. All this has happened before, all this shall happen again.

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