Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer
Cast :
Alyson Hannigan……….Julia Jones
Adam Campbell……….Grant Fonckyerdoder
Jennifer Coolidge……….Mrs. Fonckyerdoder
Eddie Griffin……….Frank Jones
Fred Willard……….Mr. Fonckyerdoder
Sophie Monk……….Andy
Tony Cox……….Hitch
Romantic comedies have a bit of a love-hate relationship with movie-going masses. Some are monster smashes that gross well over $150 million domestically like Hitch or My Big Fat Greek Wedding or they fail to find an audience like Must Love Dogs (which didn’t cross $60 million in worldwide box office grosses). Whatever the box office gross ends up being, romantic comedies generally tend to follow the same sort of plot formula to coincide with the same character types, et al. So a complete and total spoof seemed to be in order, and having two of the writers behind the wildly successful Scary Movie franchise writing and directing it seems to be a good start with Date Movie.
Designed as a send-up of romantic comedies, Date Movie is more of a collection of cheeky pop culture reference and half-hearted attempts at mocking scenes from better films than it is an actual film. Centered loosely around the formulaic romance of Julia (Alyson Hannigan) and Grant (Adam Campbell, the film’s whole purpose is to spoof famous scenes from other, better, movies in an attempt to emulate the success of the Scary Movie franchise; it’s no surprise considering directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were two of the original writers on that film.
The romance begins as Julia as an obese woman, as Hannigan with a fat suit on is played for yucks, meets Grant at her father’s restaurant. Determined to try and be the type of woman he’d pursue, she goes to Hitch (Tony Cox) for some refining. In a spoof of MTV staple “Pimp my ride,” Julia is transformed into Allison Hannigan without a fat suit on and in short order Grant and Julia are in love and engaged to be married. From there it’s about another 30-40 scenes of spoof scenes ripped directly from such “classics” as The Wedding Planner, Meet the Fockers, Sleepless in Seattle and My Best Friend’s Wedding (amongst others). And this is where the film immediately falls face forward and never recovers,
It’s one thing to spoof, it’s another to do it poorly and that’s just what Date Movie does. Every scene stolen from another film does not hold up well, as the film looks like a collection of greatest hits from car crashes selected by small town Departments of Motor Vehicles. Friedberg and Seltzer seem to be under the impression that merely copying another film and then changing it up to make it “funny” somehow is cute but is quite annoying; they go out of their way to spoof movies that are instantly forgettable as opposed to spoofing the concepts and formulas from which they are spawned. One has to think hard to try and remember all of the films that they go out of their way to emulate; that’s a problem because so many of these films were so forgettable that it takes away from the film’s inherent concept (spoofing romantic comedies). By focusing on certain scenes and trying to evoke the memory of other films, Friedberg and Seltzer miscalculate into thinking that forcing a relatively talented cast into this sort of half-hearted, half-brained “wit” will somehow turn into comedic gold.
This isn’t a cast of amazing talent or Oscar winners but Hannigan, Fred Williard, Tony Cox and Eddie Griffin are all capable of being funny with good material. It’s almost painful to watch a number of normally solid comedians try and turn chicken droppings into chicken salad.
