**Note: we're doing our best to catch up on
some of the films that slipped through the cracks here at the Cleveland
Movie Blog. I believe MOVIE 43 did have a screening, but at the time no one was available to cover it. It's on Netflix instant at the moment, so I figured what the Hell, I'll check it out.
Review by Bob
Ignizio

MOVIE 43
is held together by an unengaging framing sequence in which a
mentally unstable writer (Dennis Quaid) is pitching a script at
gunpoint to a low level studio executive (Greg Kinnear), with each
segment then springing to life as Quaid reads the script. I'm
not proud of it, but the first segment made
my inner twelve year old laugh quite a bit. Beth (Kate Winslett) goes
on a date with Davis (Hugh Jackman), an otherwise perfect catch –
rich, good looking (he's Hugh Jackman), smart, and charming – who
just happens to have a pair of testicles hanging from his neck. It's
basically one juvenile joke stretched to the breaking point, but
Peter Farrelly's direction sells it. This turns out to be the high
water mark for the movie.
That
said, there are a few other relative bright spots along the way.
Brett Ratner delivers a modestly funny segment in which Johnny
Knoxville captures a leprechaun to steal its gold as a way of
apologizing for sleeping with Sean William Scott's girlfriend. The
violence might be off-putting to some viewers, but anyone used to
Troma films and the like should be fine. And speaking of Troma,
TROMEO AND JULIET
screenwriter (and director of next year's GUARDIANS OF THE
GALAXY) James Gunn almost
scores with “Beezel”, a post credits segment in which an animated
cat comes between his owner (Josh Duhamel) and the owner's girlfriend
(Elizabeth Banks) in some fairly disturbing (and funny) ways.
Unfortunately the segment can't seem to figure out a satisfying
ending and just goes over the cliff.
I
also got a few politically incorrect chuckles out of Rusty Cundieff's
(FEAR OF A BLACK HAT)
sports film parody. Terrence Howard plays the coach of an all-black
basketball team some time in the not too distant past, probably early
60's. The joke is that Howard's team are scared to be going up
against an all-white team for the first time. It proves remarkably
hard for the coach to overcome this fear despite what he sees as one
very important advantage his team possesses. Like the balls on the
chin gag in the first segment, the one joke here gets pretty much
beat into the ground, but the segment ends right about when it starts
to get old.
Despite
the presence of some fairly big names both in front of and behind the
cameras, the remaining segments in MOVIE 43
are pretty bad. There are a few scattered laughs, but overall it
doesn't matter who the writers, directors, or cast in each segment
are; most of MOVIE 43
is unfunny and frequently mean-spirited (not to mention juvenile and
tasteless, although that's not really an issue for me when it's done
well – see my review of BAD GRANDPA).
Yes, there are a few laughs, but even the segments I'm giving a pass
to aren't good enough to warrant actually going out of your way to
watch the movie. 1 1/2 out of 4 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We approve all legitimate comments. However, comments that include links to irrelevant commercial websites and/or websites dealing with illegal or inappropriate content will be marked as spam.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.