Traditionally, I love spoofs. I spent many of my younger days watching movies like Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights or Young Frankenstein. More recently, I have actually (for the most part) enjoyed every Scary Movie. So whenever I see a new spoof, I am at least somewhat interested in the movie and have aspirations to see it on disc. Epic Movie scares me a bit because it comes from the same people who did Date Movie. I found Date Movie to be okay at best, but I had a small hope that this would turn out better. Jello shots & Nyquil could not save me from this disaster.
The movie starts out with Lucy (played by Jayma Mays), Edward (played by Kal Penn), Susan (played by Faune Chambers) and Peter (played by Adam Campbell) who find golden tickets inside Willy chocolate bars. Their scenes emulate DaVinci Code, Nacho Libre, Snakes on a Plane, & X-Men. They get to the chocolate factory where they meet Willy (played by Crispin Glover) who shows them inside. He then explains how the four lucky winners are to become parts of his candy. So they start running.
After they run for a while in the huge house, Lucy comes upon a wardrobe. Inside she finds a very different place. The place of GNarnia. She is met by Mr. Tumnus (played by Hector Jimenez), a half man, half goat. He takes her back to his place (cue Cribs spoof). The next morning he tells Lucy to go or else she’ll be captured and killed by the Evil White Bitch (played by Jennifer Coolidge). In the meantime, Edward finds the wardrobe as well and actually finds the Evil White Bitch. She convinces him to go back for the others so Edward can be king and the others can be their subjects. In reality, this is just a master plan for the White Bitch to kill the four children and plant a weapon of mass destruction so GNarnia can stay in an eternal winter forever.
I could go on, but why? It’s not going to get any better. This is miserable. Spoofs are supposed to take whatever they are trying to make fun of, twist it around and make it funny. They aren’t supposed to rip it off, changing barely anything and put a really silly joke on the end of it. Especially when that joke is vomit, fart, or any other 5 year old related. I mean they spoof everything from Chronicles of Narnia (obviously) to Harry Potter to even a little bit of Pirates of the Caribbean & Borat. With the exception of Borat, this should provide mountains of good material. But it simply doesn’t.
The two male leads (Kal Penn & Adam Campbell) are so annoying that any scene they are in turns to mush really quickly with no sense of getting better. Faune Chambers fills the “ghetto vibe” of a typecast black girl.
However, there are some decent performances here and I feel should mention them. The most obvious one is the character of Aslo (played by Fred Willard). Even though Fred only appears on the movie for 5-10 minutes, it’s obvious that he is far above the norm here. Jennifer Coolidge (EWB) & Jayma Mays (Lucy) also provide passable roles as their characters. However, they were restricted by writing. A special honorable mention also goes to Darrell Hammond who plays Captain Jack Swallows and Carmen Electra who plays Mystique. Darrell provides a good mockery of the famous Johnny Depp character and Carmen gets be nearly nude in blue makeup. Thank you. But I’m listing 1 strong character and 4 decent ones in a cast sheet that’s close to half a dozen pages long. That’s not even passable.
Video
This film is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. It looks pretty decent and at moments it even looks really good. Colors are vibrant for the most part; however in other instances things just looked rather cheap and unrealistic. However, the video that was actually shot is more than adequate when you take into account, the final product.
Audio
The disc has three audios, Dolby Digital 5.1 in English, Dolby Digital 2.0 in Spanish and French. The 5.1 is pretty strong, though I did wish for more surround effects (and not just when they try to get all urban). Dialog is clear for the most part but I did have to turn it up a couple of slight notches. Subtitles are also provided in English and Spanish.
Special Features
- Automatic Trailers: A montage of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Date Movie and Reno 911! Miami
- Audio Commentary: Aaron Seltzer & Jason Friedberg provide the commentary. They are absolutely the worst commentary duo I have ever heard. They sit around for ninety minutes and lie about the movie. Heck I don’t even know if they are watching the same movie while commentating. They might be watching Star Trek IV, I know I wish I was. They would have been ten times better off either being serious or better yet insert Fred Willard and a couple of other cast members who actually have a brain.
- Breaking Wind: An Epic Journey into the Sounds of an Epic Movie: This On/Off feature adds more sound effects and amplifies present ones to the movie track. Cause I really need to hear belch and fart sound effects more in this god awful movie.
- How Gratuitous: One last on/off feature. When you see Harry Beaver, click on it and you get some gratuitous shots of women in next to nothing (like during the Lazy Pirate Day video). Woohoo boobies! *shrug* *sigh* I’m trying.
- Everyone Loves Beaver: Epic Hookups 4:17: Apparently everybody on the set had sex with Harry Beaver. That little Beaver gets around and apparently everybody is also comfortable with that fact. There is a hamster joke somewhere in this but I’m not even attempting to fish it out.
- Making The Video: Lazy Pirate Day 9:34: A spoof making the video show with some good stuff from Darrell Hammon (Captain Jack Swallows) and Playboy bunnies who tell me something about their acting skills but I was too busy with something else.
- Outtakes 3:39: Your usual assortment of Outtakes of the actors/actresses messing up. Mildly funny.
- Alternate Ending 1:32: Another ending to the film. This one involves Willy being in on the whole GNarnia thing the whole time. Actually would have worked better on some level. Still wouldn’t have saved the movie though.
- Epic Porn – What Would Your Porno Movie Be Called 2:29: Stars out with a faun phone sex ad by Hector Jimenez which actually doesn’t even make sense. Then the rest of the time is spent getting answers from the crew and finishing up with the actors not knowing what to say when Carmen Electra describes how they got the blue makeup on. I don’t either but again I was probably staring at Carmen.
- What Makes Aslo So Irrestible 2:08: Fred Willard and others speak as to why the lion is such a ladies man. More jokes, at least Fred (as he will later) saves this featurette.
- Hot or Not: Character Turn On’s and Turn Offs 1:43: The funniest featurette that is not just Fred Willard. The characters talk to what turns them on and off. The freaking stuffed Beaver is actually really funny here.
- Fox Movie Channel Presents: Making a Spoof 7:17: Fred Willard sits down with us to discuss the movie with a whole bunch of clips. Willard is awesome here, please explain to me why he was only in the movie 5 to 10 minutes. He gets more appreciated time here.
- Fox Movie Channel Presents: In Character with Fred Willard 9:05: More good stuff from Fred, explaining his life and career. This is the best featurette overall because to be honest it has nothing to do with Epic Movie. I got a great idea, there needs to be a movie with Bruce Campbell and Fred Willard. Fred can be the father and Bruce can be the son and it can be some bizarre sci-fi comedy. And Go.
- Die Libre: The Winning Short from the Epic Movie Viral Video Contest 3:01: I guess Epic Movie had a contest where you had spoof a couple of movies in a three minute flic. This was the winner, I’m really scared to know what were the losers.
- Reno 911! Miami Trailer 2:24: The movie that I should have been watching. I was laughing more in 2 minutes than the entire 90 minutes of Epic Movie.
Final Thoughts
I had high hopes for this film, unfortunately what I got was a pile. A steaming one. In a midst of fart and bad jokes that I simply don’t get, we have a movie that was written by people who were dropped on their head repeatedly at birth. The actors and actresses are okay, but you can tell that they didn’t have many decent lines to go after. Fred Willard does the single best job in this film (close second by Jennifer Coolidge) but he isn’t even in the movie longer than 10 minutes. The disc is actually a good one with adequate video and audio. The extras are long and plentiful (and better than the movie) but the commentary is beyond awful and most of the featurettes are another joke taken too far. I can’t recommend this flic nor the dvd. Just remember folks, if you are curious about Meet the Spartans, its from the same writing duo. Chances are I’ll probably see that in a few months on my review pile. I need more Jello Shots and Nyquil.
Other Reviews
- DvdVerdict.com – “Epic Movie’s gross disregard for plot, character, comic timing, and the basic structure of a good joke hurt me. Don’t let it hurt you.”
- CurrentFilm.com – “It’s slightly better than “Date Movie”, but while “Epic Movie” manages to get a couple of chuckles, there’s quite a few bits throughout that are unfunny or just plain terrible.”
- DvdMG.com – “Not a single laugh ever emanates from this tired, predictable, inane nonsense.”
