Directors:Elizabeth Banks, Steven BrillSteve Carr,Rusty Cundieff,James Duffy,Griffin Dunne,Peter Farrelly,Patrik Forsberg,James Gunn,Bob Odenkirk,Brett Ratner,Jonathan van Tulleken
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 1/10
When looking at the ridiculous number of stars in the new comedy Movie 43, one might believe that this could be the ultimate comedy film. Unfortunately, those that thought that probably walked out of the movie feeling dumber than the title of the film itself. This is a complete travesty of a movie and is a complete failure on all levels.
The concept is something we’ve seen many times before in other anthology movies. There’s a series of “comedic” vignettes all pulled together with a thin story to tie them all together. The bookends basically consist of Dennis Quad’s character pitching movie ideas to Greg Kinnear and what we get are 11 or so piles of unwatchable garbage.
In a film that touts such a huge cast and boasts that it’s the raunchiest and funniest thing ever, there is little laughter to be had. All the comedy stems from the lowest of lowbrow and opts for gross outs and raunch rather than decent storytelling. It’s a movie full of punch lines that don’t work and it’s even more shameful that it’s big stars doing it.
With most of these anthology movies there’s usually one or two standouts and the rest prove to be mediocre, however in this everything is an utter mess. You’ll find yourself gauging the best segments as the ones that didn’t make you want to get up and leave the theater.
On the performance side the overblown cast runs the gamut from embarrassing to painful. It’s hard to decide which moments are best. Was it Kate Winslet reacting to Hugh Jackman who has a pair of testicles growing out of his throat? Or maybe it was Anna Ferris asking Chris Pratt to take a dump on the back of her neck. Then again it could be the speed dating segment featuring Jason Sudeikis and Justin Long as Batman and Robin. If any of these sound funny then I haven’t fully done my job in conveying how miserable this movie is. Think Scary Movie 4 mixed with a straight to DVD National Lampoon movie and throw in a dash of the worst season of SNL you can think of.
Some of the segments did have promising setups, but they all inevitably fell apart by the end. The story involving Stephen Merchant and Halle Berry playing an increasingly crazy game of truth or dare was interesting at first, but it quickly went off the rails and straight into a painful ditch of sadness.
The stories are so random and haphazardly put together that it makes me wonder if any editing or planning took place at all. During the credits there’s a blooper real that plays and it features a segment that wasn’t even in the actual movie, you have to wait till after the credits to see it. Trust me though, you don’t want to see it.
I like the concept of anthology movies. I like nearly everyone in this cast. I even liked the idea of some of the segments but the execution was so poorly done that I couldn’t recommend this movie to even my friends that like stupid humor.
