Cinematic Disasters - Disaster Movie

 

Well...it's that time again....time to see what kind of crap Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are making this time. Yay.

Disaster Movie is a 2008 parody movie. It was produced by Grosvenor Park, The Safran Company, and 3 in the Box and distributed by Lionsgate. Disaster Movie was written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

The story is Will is on edge after having a dream about being warned that the end of the world is coming. Despite this, him and friends continue to live their lives, which is short lived after a huge meteor storm arrives. Now Will and his friends must not only survivor this disaster, but they also must work they're way through the city to save Will's girlfriend Amy.

My Thoughts

So our title sequences begins with Earth and then the title exploded. In the same style as Michael Bay's Armageddon, alright. We have a disaster film reference in a movie called Disaster Movie. Why am I making a big deal out of that? Pay close attention afterwards and you'll see why.

Then our movie starts off with a parody of 10,000 B.C., We see our main character Will running from an animal and then we get our first of far too many pop culture references, where he proceeds to American Gladiator's Wolf. Not even ten minutes in, and it's already stupid. After that, Will runs into...Amy Winehouse...just go with it. After a far too long burp joke sequence, She tells Will that the end of the world will be on Aug 29th, 2008, and their fate lies within...the crystal skull from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Where six minutes in, and we're faking fun of movies that AREN'T disaster films.

After that, we cut to Will sweet sixteen (despite being him being 25), we get awful parodies of No Country for Old Men, Superbad, and Wanted. I'm annoyed Friedberg and Seltzer are making fun of No Country for Old Men and Wanted, but how is it, on their FOURTH movie, they still haven't learned you can't make fun of films like Superbad. That movie is a comedy, which means it's already making fun of itself, so there's no point in spoofing it!

During the Wanted parody, we cut to Kim Kardashian and Carmen Electra have a fight in a parody of WWE: Divas Search. For the record, yes Kim and Carmen both have character names, but be honest. You're just calling them by their real names. But the real point to get to is how outdated this WWE parody is. Cause WWE stopped doing that contest back in 2007. Another lesson these two didn't learn, never make all of your jokes something related to the current year, because by the time that year is over, the joke isn't gonna work anymore.

Also, Juney is here. Who's Juney you might be asking, she's the parody of Juno. Fourteen minutes in, and no disaster movies are being parodied. Don't worry they'll show up soon....I think.

Then we're introduced to a musical number which spoofs High School Musical 3: Senior Year, and my god. How is it that this sequence was only four minutes long, and yet it felt like it went on forever? Like it said it's only four minutes, but somehow it felt longer than that. How do you do that? How do you make a pretty short scene, feel like it goes on and on and on and on!

Afterwards, I checked the clock...and we're only twenty minutes in. Which is weird because it felt like I was sitting there way longer than that. Then I came to a conclusion, and that being, the pacing is dreadful! Any time there's a joke or a parody of another movie on screen, especially the parodies, the movie just comes to a complete stop, to make an awful joke, then it goes on, but then there's another parody, so the movie has to come to a complete stop. And that happens over and over again. So because of the pause and resume structure, an hour long movie almost feels like three or more hours.

There's one good the ghetto got destroyed joke. I mean it. That was the only good joke. Everything before and after that is just awful.

So now we have meteor shower. Yes, we finally came to the disaster portion of Disaster Movie. So, that means right off the bat we'll finally start getting disaster movie parodies, right? Nope. Cause then we get a joke with Hannah Montana. Then she dies, says some stupid joke, dies, says some stupid joke, and we repeat that process. In the hands of a good writer or writers that could've worked...but we didn't have good writers unfortunately. Then we get a parody of Hancock. It's as predictable as it is pointless.

Then the city starts to freeze over. Apparently that meteor shower from earlier just went away, so Will and his friends take shelter and then the meet the chicks from Sex and the City. Which then leads to Juney fighting one of them, I didn't care to look up which character it is. Never once have I ever cared for the show and anything relating to it, so I'm not bothering with character names, then we're given a pointless parody of Don't Mess with the Zohan, but both during and after that fight we see quite possibly the most forced adult humor ever. Another common problem with the movie.

After that bit of stupidity, Will has a flashback to a moment with his girlfriend Amy. Now this scene is meant for character, but we don't care. Why? Because we know Friedberg and Seltzer don't care. We know that both during and after this scene, they're just gonna move on to make another awful joke relating to movies released in 2008, or pop culture in general. This scene in and of itself proves that, because during the flashback we get spoofs of Jumper and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Will and the others leave the shelter and then Will gets a call from his girl Amy. They have a brief conversation, which also has an AT&T ad slapped onto, because product placement, and afterwards Will sets out to rescue her. His friends come along, expect for Kim Kardashian's character because she doesn't think it's save. Then she's crushed by a meteor, and despite putting in sad dramatic music nobody cares. Throughout the movie leading up to this point, we don't care her character died. There was nothing to make use emotional attached to her. So big deal.

Now we're at scene where Calvin (Will's friend and Kim's character's boyfriend) is sad and crying and then Giselle from Enchanted shows up. Again, that was a comedy, actually Enchanted itself already comes off as a parody, so why parody a parody? That makes no sense. Also, that movie came out in 2007, so making fun of it in mid-to-late 2008 make any joke Friedberg & Seltzer make about her outdated. Also this character is annoying! She's not in the movie that long, but still, she's just annoying. I couldn't stand her.

After this introduction...we have a dance scene. Yep, much like Meet the Spartans, Friedberg and Seltzer put in a dance scene, because they have to pad out the runtime. As if people weren't already suffering enough throughout this movie.

Thankfully that scene is over, but now an even dumber one comes along. A twister now arrives, and parody Giselle shouts "we need a hero!" Then Iron Man arrives, gets crushed by a cow. Then Hellboy and Hulk shows up and the same thing happens. That's the entire scene. They say something related to their character, a cow hits them, and they walk away.

So the group takes shelter AGAIN, and guess what? MORE POP CULTURE REFERENCES! Now their dancing with Alvin and the Chipmunks. Then the chipmunks go evil for some reason, attack the group, and kill Juney. Guess what? Nobody cares. We don't care if these characters die. We don't love them nor do we have any reason to hope they survive. If anything, we're begging for all of them to die, because when that happens, we won't have to sit through the movie anymore.

After making through the stupid bit, the group runs into Batman because The Dark Knight was a huge thing back in 2008. So he says some stupid dialogue that's supposed to be funny, and then just goes away. It's almost like that served no purpose, and was parodied for the sake of a pop culture reference. Much like everything else in this movie.

And do you know what's better than a pointless scene like that? ANOTHER POINTLESS POP CULTURE SCENE! Now the group hijacks Speed Racer's Mach 5, and during this scene they try to make more of a dark humorous one, but there's nothing here. It's just parody Giselle shooting Speed Racer, and they just move onto the next scene. Also during this scene Friedberg and Seltzer make fun of Michael Jackson....because it worked so well in Date Movie.

So the group finally goes to the museum that Amy was trapped in, rescue her, and now, all of a sudden, Friedberg and Seltzer want to do a plot. And they can't do that. You can't have us, watch these characters do nothing but interact with characters from other movies, make god awful jokes about said movies, and then now, give us a story. Especially when the previous stories (Will's relationship issues and the rescue) were barely there to begin with.

While Will and Amy return the crystal skull, ya remember that? The crystal skull? No. Well I can't blame. I myself forgot all about that. Anyhow, they want to return the crystal skull to the alter to stop the apocalypse. Meanwhile, Calvin and parody Giselle decided to go to the emergency evacuation zone, but they're locked inside the museum. Where we now have Night of the Museum. And I gotta say, out of all the parodies in this movie, this was the most pointless. There wasn't an attempt at a joke or anything. The characters show up, walking around, and then Calvin and parody Giselle just run away.

Then we cut back to Will and Amy where they run into Beowulf, where they crack jokes about how he once fought completely naked. Totally original jokes guys. Nobody was making those before this movie. This was clearly the genius of Friedberg and Seltzer being ahead of the curve.

Then we cut back to Calvin and parody Giselle trying to find a way out of the museum...then they run into Po from Kung Fu Panda. Where the actor for Po is wearing a terrifying costume. Just look at it...

This movie is by no means meant for kids, but could you imagine if they saw this. You'd probably scar them for life (🤣). But after that fight, Po kills Calvin and thankfully Giselle. Seeing that parody of Giselle get killed was the only time I cheered, and I'd imagine the same response happened in the theaters when this was first released.

Thankfully, thankfully were finally nearing the end. So after the fight scenes, and a parody of Indiana Jones with Tony Cox playing Indiana, Will and Amy put the skull back where it belongs. Then Will and Amy go and get married, where not only do we have a completely pointless parody of The Love Guru, but they end the movie with this song...

Now some of you say "Hey, that's kind of funny, and a little bit catchy". Well there's a reason it's funny, it's because Friedberg and Seltzer didn't write it. They STOLE it from Sarah Silverman's I'm F*cking Matt Damon, but they just changed the words a little bit. Don't believe me? Well watch this...

How they managed not to get sued is beyond me.

So that was Disaster Movie and holy sh*t....just....holy sh*t. Somehow, Friedberg and Seltzer out did themselves. They somehow made a movie worse then their previous ones. The bad jokes, the pop culture references, product placement, celebrity look-a-likes, horrible pacing, everything. They turned all that up to 12, not 11, but 12, they went one step beyond. But what's really awful about this movie is the title. It's a complete lie. Hell, even in Brazil they lied about the title, they called it Superheroes: The Injustice League. Again, that's a lie because there's only five superheroes in this, and they're not on screen for a minute. I also kept track of everything folks, they made fun of a total of 23 movies and none, NONE of them are disaster flicks! The closet we got was that opening title sequence, but that doesn't count. How did the miss the mark on their own gimmick?! It's like they saw the trailers (and I say they saw trailers because some of the movies that made fun of were released a month or two before this one), said "Let's make fun of that, but we already used Date and Epic for a title, so let's use Disaster". Because that's one of the genres we didn't use for a marketing ploy". And even then, that was pointless because the disasters themselves were either barely there, or not there at all!

My final rating is Destroy It!

Wow, this was a tough one to sit through folks. Due come back on Saturday, Apr 23rd, for my review of The Bad Guys. Hopefully that'll be a better experience. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.