Disaster(ous) Movie

Never before has a title been more fittingly appropriate than Disaster Movie. It truly is a disaster of a movie. Void of class, wit and intelligence, it’s not just one of the worst films of the year. It’s one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

This atrocity is brought to us by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the same clowns who gave us such cinematic turds as Epic Movie, Date Movie and Meet the Spartans. The laughing stocks of Hollywood, these two have time and again released terrible, shameful, stupid films to the undeserving public.

In fact, I believe that every time one of their movies is played, our collective IQ’s drop. Did you feel that? That was a screening of Disaster Movie finishing and you getting stupider. To be honest, I fear for our world. Surely the fact that these two bozos keep getting the money to make their celluloid abominations is a sign of the apocalypse.

One of the fundamental problems here is that every other film they are spoofing is infinitely better, with the possible exception of 10,000 B.C. They spoof Iron Man, Get Smart, No Country For Old Men, Enchanted, Juno, Indiana Jones, Beowulf, Wanted, Kung Fu Panda, High School Musical and more. So despite its implied title, it rarely spoofs actual disaster movies. It should have been called Any Movie to Come Out in the Last Two Years Movie.

Just like many spoof movies rely on randomness to produce laughs, so goes Disaster Movie. But the difference between this and, say, The Naked Gun films is that they were actually funny and still are today thanks to their jokes being snatched from the film world rather than pop culture. In this picture, the wisecracks not ripped from another movie almost always stemmed from pop culture which makes future viewings irrelevant and nonsensical. Miley Cyrus shows up to promote her album as she dies, Jessica Simpson appears to sing badly and Michael Jackson hides in a trunk with a young boy. Michael Jackson? Really? The jokes in the film are old hat, poorly constructed and won’t make sense a few years from now.

Another problem is that Friedberg and Seltzer do not understand that it is not inherently funny to simply have characters from other movies show up just for the sake of being there. You have to give them something to do to make it funny. Iron Man shows up at one point in the movie and a cow is dropped on him. Shortly after, the Hulk shows up and a cow is dropped on him. Then Hellboy shows up. Guess what happens? A cow is dropped on him. It was like the filmmakers wanted us to say, “Oh, how funny! It’s Iron Man, but this isn’t an Iron Man movie! Tee hee!” But it isn’t funny. It’s disheartening to think that the only gags they could come up with relating to these heroes were to hit them with cows. These guys couldn’t create humor onscreen if God himself had written the script.

It’s rare for a movie to be so bad that you can herald it as one of the most abysmal things ever to be put on screen, but then along comes the truly appalling Disaster Movie. It is dreadful in every way and it deserves no recognition whatsoever. The only reason to ever watch this dreck is to see just how low filmmaking can go.

Disaster Movie receives 0/5