Paul Evans
Sometimes you wonder why a production team doesn't cut a movie when they're making it, having the obvious realisation that what they're making is dreadful, surely it's more financially damaging to complete and release a diabolical mess like this, then it would have been to say stop. The premise seems good, two of the writers from Scary movie take the spoof them to a bigger scale, but do it so badly. It's unfunny, it could be deemed offensive, there is virtually nothing positive I can say about it, the acting is unforgivable in this day and age, it smacks of 1980's b movie all the way through, I realise they were up against it with the script, but come on. Do something more useful, like clean the bathroom, 1/10.
ironhorse_iv
Blockbuster Movies are what make Hollywood into a successful business. These movies are so big they need the italic title 'epic' to describe them. So you would think, parody movies about them, would be, worth the big bucks and worth seeing. However, most of them, the most recent ones are pretty lousy and way low-budget. Probably one of the worst, is the film series, movie 'movie'-cash-in, created by director/writer duo, Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg. These movies from them, ranging from 2000's Scary Movie, 2006's Date Movie, to 2008's Disaster Movie, doesn't have the cleverness or smarts to take something serious existing, and make something new with their comedy. These men, are no Mel Brooks, Monty Python, or even Zucker Brothers. I think, the reason, why these two writers are not that funny, is because they create comedic movies that parody and reference recent pop culture without concern for the overarching plot or characterization. There is no bigger example of bigger mishap of that, then 2007's Epic Movie; which goes all over the place, ranging from parodies of music videos, viral memes, commercials & television shows that has nothing to do, with epic movies. It's a reference overdosed. Even, when the movie focus on movie parodies, they pick some of the worst choices to parody about. Honestly, ask yourself this, how do you, make a parody of already establishing comedy. The jokes are not new, nor fresh. Like really, what was the point of having 2006's Nacho Libre & Borat in this type of a film. What does they, have to do with epic movies!? The reason, why I ask this, is because, when most people think of epic movies; most of them, think classic historical fantasy setting, or extreme science fiction settings. In my view, I see those two examples as nowhere near that. One of the main criticisms of their work is that the pop culture jokes that they rely on become outdated within just a few years, with the things that they're parodying having fallen out of the collective consciousness. A few of their gags had fallen out of memory before the respective movie came out. Their tendency to base brief parodies on the trailers to movies that wouldn't be released until well into their own production probably has something to do with it, is jarring. Since this movie has little to no continuity, there is no stalks in caring for the story or the characters. Don't get me wrong, all the main actors and supporting characters were mostly fine, is this film, but when sub-plots, like a group of adult orphans, Edward (Kal Penn) & Peter (Adam Campbell), Susan (Faune A. Chambers) & Lucy (Jayma Mays), being force to be turn into food at the factory, are quickly replace, by a Narnia parody that overtakes the rest of the film. It's become really off-centered. Themes like that, and the out of nowhere, horrible deux ex machina ending made this film, really confusing. After all, there is little to care about their plot conflict. The movie treat death, as if a cartoon. These people get seriously hurt, and are perfectly alright in a few moments later. It doesn't allow enough time for these slapstick jokes to sink in. I get that most of the time, they trying to go the low-brow cartoon-like violence route, but most slapsticks comedies, work best, when you can really sense the pain and misery. The movie has no stalks. Then, there is the somewhat offensive, vulgar humor that movies like this, have. Other films work best with this type of humor, because it allow the scenes to have context. In here, it's mostly use as a throwaway gag like the pointless nudity, this film has. Even the low-brow toilet humor felt kinda forced. Yes, some of the gags in this movie kinda works, but most of it, really fall flat. The "uncut" version of this film, apparently decides that the best way to improve its below average comedy, is to add more same running jokes scenes as the original version. In my opinion, it does add anything, worth-while. You could argue that the spoof genre would have died out in the late 2000s regardless, as audience tastes moved to "bro-comedy" films, ensemble pieces and more intellectual comedies, not to mention the rise in popularity of quickly-produced, and, therefore, more topical web-based movie parody comedy like College Humor, or Funny or Die, but Seltzer and Friedberg helped completely drive the genre into the ground, with Epic Movie being one that officially signified its own death. These days, most spoof movies are relegated to Direct-To-Video. Due to the nature of their films largely being simplistic parodies of whatever is popular at the time, a number of other parody films in the same style have been wrongly attributed to them. This includes 2001's Not Another Teen Movie, 2008's Superhero Movie and 2009's Dance Flick. While, I wouldn't say, all of the recent parodies are super-awful. I do have to say, overall: Epic Movie is one of those, that is.
Shehroze Ameen
I strongly disagree with the rating this movie got. Get Hard (2015) should have a 2.3. Ark (2005) should have a 1.0, But this... it was nice. I think it had some good humor attached to it (the Pirates of the Caribbean 2 reference, for instance actually does make sense, and made for good laughs in my opinion). Among other things, it had a plot and didn't needlessly generate discordance (hey, since we're speaking of spoilers, I'll put in a spoiler for people - Will Farrell's Get Hard. period).Point being, it's a lampoon of movies which came out at the time. And overall, it handled those lampoons quite well, and where it succeeded was making me feel relaxed and not perturbed (Will Farrell's Get Hard, people). So, jokes apart, watch it. It is epic in its own silly way, and it doesn't shirk away from what it intended to do - it's a lampoon, and that was how it was intended to be.
