EPIC MOVIE
US, 2006, 80 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.
Films like Epic Movie (and its predecessors Scary Movie and Date Movie) are critic-proof in the sense that no critic in their right mind would consider them works of cinema art – and they don’t, especially the easily disgruntled critics. These films are pop entertainments for the movie-going crowd. They are always hit-and-miss in terms of their jokes and their senses of humour. They are usually slapstick in style with some crass bodily function jokes de rigeur. They are spoofs of the kind we expect on television, throwaway satires.
And, it always depends on whether you have seen the films they are sending up, otherwise why bother! You won’t see the point. Since the films always start at the top of the US box-office when they are released, it is clear that there is a viable market out there.
The makers of Epic Movie have been part of the team for the Scary Movie series and Date Movie.
When you think of it, there have been quite a number of epic movies in the last year or two to parody. Narnia (or Gnarnia, with a silent G for legal reasons!) provides the framework of the plot. Four orphans gather – from the murder in the Louvre, pursued by a flagellating albino monk; from an epidemic of snakes on a plane where a young African woman is on her way to Namibia to be adopted by Angelina and Brad; a bullied reject from the X Men academy and a reject from the monastery of Nacho Libre. They also find golden tickets to the Wonka factory where Crispin Glover does an effective Johnny Depp take-off.
They are set upon by Captain Jack Swallows from the Caribbean (and Darrell Hammond does an even better Depp-Sparrow? impersonation). Harry Potter and co are no help.
Meanwhile Narnia gets the full treatment with skits on Mr Tumnus, on the badger, with Jennifer Coolidge (always good) as the White Bitch and Fred Willard (doing a variation on his Christopher Guest films) as a very unsaviour like Aslo).
The film is quite up to date with a Borat impersonator turning up at the end.
It needs to be said for those who have a compulsion to leap out of their seats as soon as the first of the final credits appears that the credits last for 15 minutes of the 85 minutes of the film. They do break for a rather long, colourful song from the Oompa Loompas and a poke at Mel Gibson, drunk and insulting in prison.
Yes, it’s pretty corny and juvenile but, if you’ve seen all the reference films, you might enjoy tracking the spoofs.
The film-makers next project was the spoof of 300, Meet the Spartans.
