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alt title(s): Jason Friedberg; Aaron Seltzer; Date Movie; Epic Movie; Meet The Spartans
The Seltzer and Friedberg Way.
Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline.
Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, the co-directors of
Date Movie,
Epic Movie,
Meet the Spartans and
Disaster Movie. The only two men in Hollywood capable of competing on the Bad Director-O-Meter with
Uwe Boll.
To be a bit clearer, they have a full-fledged Hollywood directing career that consists of making fun of much better movies. And by 'making fun of', we mean getting a bunch of C-list actors to dress up as characters from current blockbusters - frequently giving them the exact same name, so there's absolutely no doubt of just how hilarious their appearance is - and have them do something vaguely exaggerated from what they did in their movies. With reworkings to accommodate
bodily function jokes.
Think
Airplane! with all clever and innovative satire liposuctioned out. And the plane is grounded. We don't know what the creative vision is here, but it certainly isn't comedy. Unless possibly you're a particularly immature ten-year-old for whom
Dumb and Dumber was too complex.
They started as writers for movies like
Spy Hard and
Scary Movie. The former was critically panned and didn't do well (although it had its moments), but
Scary Movie had a much better reception, possibly due to the fact that Friedberg and Seltzer didn't direct it and were only two of six writers (plus, according to persistent rumors, the Wayans Brothers threw Friedberg and Seltzer's script in the trash and totally rewrote it). Hollywood being ever eager to wring the last drop out of a successful formula, the studio executives decided to give the two the resources to work on their own movie.
Called, imaginatively enough,
Date Movie. It was a
Shallow Parody of romance movies... supposedly. It starred Alyson Hannigan in a fat suit. It featured references from films that were hits
the year it was made, most of which were not, in fact, actual "date movies" (
Kill Bill... how romantic). Ten years from now - hell, even
today - it's doubtful that people will get most of the references. (A nod to Ben Affleck and J-Lo being together is funny for all the wrong reasons now.)
But the movie was a success (probably due to the
Lowest Common Denominator). Thus, Aaron and Jason were allowed to make a sequel,
Epic Movie. It "made fun of" most of the blockbusters from the year
it was made -
not all or even most effectively none of which could be classed as epics, but as was becoming increasingly obvious, loving homage is not these guys' strong suit.
Again,
real live decent actors like Kal Penn, David Carradine, Crispin Glover, Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge participated in this "movie". The plot? The quest from
Narnia, basically, except that the characters wander into scenarios from other movies along the way...then, uh, wander right back out of them. There are some random dance sequences, we think. Honestly,
the climax of the movie is resolved by one of the characters finding the remote from Click. In one of the most mind-boggling bits, a
Borat knock-off shows up. So, this movie is now making fun of movies that are actually funny? Not to mention - as also per the
Nacho Libre sequence -
already parodies?
Once again,
Epic Movie was a success. By then, an
anti-fandom had formed, but the execs were still seeing green. So the not-so-dynamic duo decided to make a movie called
Meet the Spartans. It was essentially a rip-off of
300 with some more vaguely-superhero-ish references added in. It's notable that, at this point, the duo had basically given up on any pretense that they were parodying specific genres anymore; the advertising proclaimed (or warned) that "the year's biggest movies" would be raked over the coals. This time, there was only one actor you could feel bad for in it:
Kevin Sorbo. All other actual actors had presumably learned their lesson by this point. (If you were a fan of
Andromeda's first-and-a-half season, you might not even feel anything at all.)
Unfortunately,
Meet the Spartans was profitable enough for yet
another sequel. And thus came the (quite possibly aptly named)
Disaster Movie. To make matters worse, the duo is progressively becoming sloppier re: quality and relevance of references. This one covers
Juno,
Hannah Montana,
Iron Man,
Sex And The City,
The Incredible Hulk,
Kung Fu Panda,
Hellboy,
The Dark Knight,
Get Smart,
Hancock,
Alvin And The Chipmunks,
Superbad,
The Simpsons Movie,
You Don't Mess With the Zohan,
The Love Guru,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
Enchanted,
Jumper,
Wanted,
Speed Racer,
Beowulf,
High School Musical,
Night At The Museum,
10,000 BC, and
The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
None of these are
disaster films. A lot of them weren't even released when the movie was being shot. And — again —
Enchanted,
Get Smart,
You Don't Mess With the Zohan and
The Love Guru are parodies already. Not of disaster films. If you look closely you might see the barest glimmer of a
Cloverfield parody (which is what the movie
should have been parodying), but that's about it.
This is also the film debut of Kim Kardashian, who is basically the next Paris Hilton. Except that even Paris Hilton knows better than to be in these movies. This film (which shot to the
number one worst movie on the IMDB
in record time) pretty much cemented Seltzer and Friedberg in the same class with
Uwe Boll. The only thing keeping them from surpassing Boll in sheer jawdropping badness is that they haven't made a
YouTube video proclaiming themselves "
fucking geniuses." Yet.
It seems that audiences have finally gotten the message, as
Disaster Movie miserably tanked on its opening weekend (a little less than seven million dollars from 2,642 screens compared to its 25 million dollar budget, with a lot of completely empty theaters), and maintains a 2% on
Rotten Tomatoes. The law of diminishing returns being what it is, we are probably ultimately facing
Movie Movie, which will consist entirely of scenes from their previous films, and may try to parody
itself in the third act. And then,
the universe will implode.
Moral (pay
close attention, all you writers out there): pop-culture references are not inherently funny. Doing something original and/or funny
with a pop culture reference that indicates you understand and appreciate the original, that can be very funny.
Their "work" provides examples of:
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Could it be that, perhaps, they're actually performance artists/savvy satirists who are trying to prove just how much they can insult the intelligence of filmgoers before people catch on?
- Better Than A Bare Bulb (and, in their minds, better than a punchline)
- Big Lipped Alligator Moment - Seems like every one of their movies has at least
one ten FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN.
- The Cameo: Carmen Electra appears in all of these movies (and plays a major role in Meet The Spartans) making her, for want of a better term, the series mascot.
- Critical Research Failure - Obviously, these are all Shallow Parodies, but a special award must be given to Epic Movie. They couldn't bother to spend ten seconds to look up Narnia on the IMDb to make sure they got the names of the kids right... and it's not like this is just some throwaway detail. They are the center of the movie.
- Disaster Movie gets the Superbad reference wrong. It depicts Seth and Fogell as the ones trying to steal beer from the party. In Superbad itself, it's Seth and Evan who are stealing the beer. Fogell was with the police, remember?
- Hey, Wolverine has 3 blades in his hands... wouldn't it be hilarious if he used the middle one to give someone the finger?? They'd never dare make a joke that audacious in the real movies!!
- They have actually admitted that they only watched the trailers for the movies that had not yet been released when their films enter production.
- Dead Baby Comedy: These two are not above making "jokes" about the most recent deaths of celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith in Meet The Spartans. A literal case of this happens in Disaster Movie, in which Not Juno chugs vodka (because fetal alcohol syndrome is hilarious), breakdances on her belly, and she and her unborn child get ripped apart by rabid wildlife from the popular disaster film Alvin and the Chipmunks.
- Also in Disaster Movie, there was a big bottle of Ambien and a wine glass, which could be a reference to Heath Ledger's death.
- Considering these two never subtly reference anything and that they have to make it as painfully obvious as possible, you may be giving them too much credit.
- Deus Ex Machina: Probably the single "greatest" one in the history of mankind was in Epic Movie. When it looks like Peter is going to lose, he just randomly finds the magic remote from Click in the grass, (which, he of course helpfully tells the audience, is the remote from Click). Even that wasn't funny.
- Dont Explain The Joke: Every single reference will be explained flatly to the audience. The Soup made fun of this with a parody of the movies entitled "Reference Movie" in which every character parody explained who they were and said "Get it?"
- DVD Commentary: Two film critics who did not like the movie were hired to commentary Date Movie. That commentary track is actually interesting (and they even managed to pin-point why Airplane! is so funny). Seltzer and Friedberg themself did also a commentary track for the movie, but that is even worse than the actual movie.
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin: Disaster Movie was aptly named, both critics and viewers teamed up to dislike every inch of the movie.
- Fan Disservice: The amount of times they show a woman with extreme cellulite is just downright disturbing.
- And the naked "Flavor Flav" is not something anyone wants to see.
- "Fan" Nickname: Seltzerberger.
- That sounds like a particularly strange hamburger, actually.
- One that could help indigestion, appropriately enough. And one that would taste crappy, considering its namesake.
- Giftedly Bad: They're delusional enough to keep making movies.
- I Am Not Shazam: Further examples of Research Failure when they refer to their cheap imitations by the titles of the movies. Such as "Enchanted Princess" or having someone dressed as Po repeatedly screaming "I AM KUNG FU PANDA!"
- Inherently Funny Words: Meet The Spartans was called Spartatouille (pronounced "Sparta-too-eee") in France. This is the only possible reason anyone could have to watch said movie.
- Lampshade Hanging
- Lowest Common Denominator
- Narrow Parody
- Negative Continuity: Main characters in Epic Movie suffer numerous life-threatening and traumatic injuries and are just fine in the next scene.
- Disaster Movie has a character get all covered in shit....only for him to be clean in the next scene. And "water breaking" (which in this case means "everybody is covered in foam"). And the two scenes where "Enchanted Princess" is mutilated by broken glass...
- NOHAMOTYO: The basics of all their gags.
- Not Screened For Critics: The critics are grateful.
- Old Shame: Presumably a future one for many of the younger cast, but especially for Adam Campbell who, after playing the leads in Date Movie and Epic Movie, has gone on to better things.
- Overly Long Gag: In Date Movie, a scene involving a hand-puppet cat squirming on a toilet bowl lasts several minutes.
- Parody Failure
- Product Placement
- Reclusive Artist: Other than the movies, we don't really know anything about these guys. All we have are two pictures circulating around the Internet, a couple of interviews, and some audio commentary on their movies' DVDs (which is apparently very cryptic and has almost nothing to do with their movie... Or So I Heard).
- Refuge In Vulgarity: Disaster Movie in particular seems to think that any scene of a woman pulling something out of her crotch is funny.
- The "uncut" version of Epic Movie apparently decides that the best way to improve an already overly long and not funny vomiting scene is to make it even longer.
- Say My Name - Disaster Movie features several characters doing nothing more than yelling their names, y'know, so you understand who they are. Because the best way to parody something is to explain exactly what it is you're parodying, for example:
"I AM IRONMAN!"
- Sequelitis: Each additional movie seems to be going Beyond The Impossible by being even more uninspired and unfunny than the last one.
- Shallow Parody: Barely even saw the movies in question outside of the Entertainment Weekly articles, on the evidence as presented.
- So Bad Its Horrible
- Special Effects Failure
- Springtime For Hitler: Some suspect that the pair are making their movies suck on purpose to kill their popularity, but failing.
- Tongue On The Flagpole: In Epic Movie.
- They Just Didnt Care: So very much.
- Viewers Are Morons: Not that the writers are that much better...
- Wall Banger
- Weird Al Effect: Inverted. Their movies will, we hope, age even worse than the stuff they pastiche. Really, people from the future probably won't understand any of the movies without checking what pop culture was like in 2006.
- There is a small chance of some understanding of bits of the movies, simply by being very, very bland, shallow, obvious parodies of certain movies that actually will age very well (such as The Dark Knight, The Lord Of The Rings, and so on).
- This is already happening. The inherent problem with referencing movies that haven't been released at the time of filming is the possibility that they'll be released and they'll fall off the radar before the movie referencing it sees the light of day a few months later. The Love Guru is a prime example. After a week of bad press, it was forgotten until the Razzie nominations were released.
- The other danger is that a movie they're parodying will have its release date pushed back and they'll end up parodying something that hasn't been released yet at the time of release.
