Movie Reviews
You can argue all you want, but the laugh factor is not legitimate criteria for rating a comedy. The fact that I might have laughed in watching a movie may mean that I’m simply an idiot and laugh at anything (I do laugh at anything). I may have laughed in “Date Movie,” but that sure doesn’t mean a thing because it’s not even worth writing a review over in the first place.
I’m not really going to mention characters' names; that would be a waste of time.
But a brief outline of the film goes as follows: An obese, self-conscious nice-girl who is bogged down by her family and job, wins over the man of her dreams via Pimp My Ride performing major surgery on her body. She leaves the body shop a thin, attractive women (they have before and after shots).
Next, the film sort of makes it way through a plotless barrage of chick flick spoofs including “Along Came Polly,” “Meet the Parents” and “Fockers,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” “Wedding Planner,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Say Anything,” “Jerry McGuire,” and a enough others to fill a straight week of pure movie-watching.
In seeing a lot of spoofs, I’ve concluded that in order for a spoof to work, it has to 1.) spoof in the context of the story (meaning the story should not take a detour to it), 2.) not be something that someone else has already spoofed, and most importantly 3.) the situation being spoofed must not come from something that was already funny. That last one is pivotal for the gag to work. “Date Movie” doesn’t care.
Most of the movies I mentioned above are considered comedies aside from “date movies,” especially “Meet the Parents.” But director Aaron Seltzer and his co-writer Jason Friedberg ignore the fact that most of the subject material they’re trying to spoof is funny all by itself. Since spoofing is comical jeering, almost every gag cancels itself out because it was funny before it was even spoofed. It’s the equivalent of the school dork saying he more macho than the captain of the football team.
Then there is the fact that some of the movies spoofed aren’t even “date movies.” Such is the case with “King Kong” (featuring Carmen Electra wearing next-to-nothing), “The Lord of the Rings” (featuring Gandalf getting kicked in the crotch and crying, “My precious!”), and “Kill Bill” (yes, “Kill Bill”).
I’m not going to give this movie any more credit than I already have by writing anymore than I already have. ˝ *