Movie Review: Disaster Movie by shoutingatco.ws

Amy Amy, It's a terrible shamey

Disaster Movie is one of the worst films we’ve ever seen.  It’s like Family Guy, but unbelievably lacking the subtlety: The film is really a collection of sketches in which a character will appear for absolutely no reason, tell a a joke that falls flat,  then everyone moves on as though nothing had happened. In fact, they care so little about continuity that at various points, mud, cuts and blood disappear in seconds.

In the opening scene, Wolf from Gladiators (don’t get your hopes up, he’s the American Wolf, not the proper one) fights with a caveman, and an Amy Winehouse lookalike (oops) jokes about her heavy drinking – an annoying moment where she says “drinking gasoline” in a vaguely London accent. It’s all a dream, FOR LITERALLY NO REASON.

In fact, the whole film progresses like this, a series of joyless sketches referencing things that were popular for a bit in 2008. A cheap McLovin’ knock-off drinks at a party, and her from Juno sings about eBay. There’s no jokes, just the writers getting high and laughing at each other: “what if Flavor Flav was in bed with them, and ran away? Then she can run off with a midget who looks like a goat.”

The parodies fail to work on any level.  They’re as fun as Jon Culshaw answering a routine question in the style of Michael McIntyre on a piss weak edition of Celebrity Juice. The film would benefit from captions saying “this is meant to be Britney Spears”, which would cut out about 90% of the questions made while watching. “Is that…?” “I think so” “But why? WHY?”

On occasion, they manage to realise how awkward the references are, and outright have the character say “It’s me! Prince Caspian!” to nobody in particular. The thing is, if you get the reference, you’re just thinking “Oh, it’s meant to be High School Musical”, and if you don’t, it’s an awkward moment while a woman dressed as a princess eats a glass bottle.

At one point, her-from-Juno shrieks “Got Milk” at a bloke playing Sarah Jessica Parker, while lactating into her face. This isn’t relevant, or even funny, but it’s one hell of a sentence.

The disaster in the title is announced as “an earthquake or some shit”, which should give you an idea of how funny the writers can be when they try. That is, not at all.  As the film progresses, it becomes clear that there are loads of disasters or something, all caused by a crystal skull or something.  It doesn’t matter though, because nothing of consequence actually happens.

Disaster Movie is lazily written, like all they’re bothered about is your being impressed when you “get” a reference. If you don’t get one, it doesn’t really matter, because things move on in seconds and everything is inconsequential. It’s actually upsettingly easy to get angry with the dreadful writing and smug, self-congratulatory song parodies. They could almost have been written by Chris Moyles, such are the obvious rhymes and outright shitness.

When films are bad because they fall short of the mark, we can still enjoy them. Disaster Movie has a decent budget – for special effects, at least – so it’s astounding that this cynical cash-in actually made it. At no point did anybody say, “hang on… I don’t get this”. An abysmal effort and one that should never have even made it past the broken brains of the writing team. Fucking despicable.

And if that’s not enough, genuinely, the highlight of the film is Kim Kardashian.

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