Jan. 30, 2013 - Issue #902: Come cry with Daniel Romano

Movie 43

Its title's meant to suggest, presumably—given its frame story of a desperate man pitching his script in a back-office—an unnamed, non-descript project made on some studio backlot. This will to obscurity's a fair wish. Or maybe it's a reference to Area 51, the supposed ET-study site. That would explain its utter non-resemblance to anything recognizably human, especially that flesh-and-blood creation known as "comedy." Otherwise, Movie 43's an execrable waste cooked up by a hell's kitchen of directors and writers. This is a bellyflop in the shallows of half-a-concept sketches, star cameos, and orifice- and genital-obsessed, male-it-in non-humour. It's death-of-laughter by committee.

The premises, usually set in generic white worlds of dating, coupledom or cheery families, are flatter than pancakes on prairie pavement. The desperation of that script-pitcher (Dennis Quaid) drips through the flick like gym-sweat. Scenarios become so strained, overwritten and stupidly scuzzy (an abducted leprechaun beaten, then shot dead, before a fairy cheerily offers fellatio to the kidnappers) that most seem like they were tweet-tossed off by rejected Saturday Night Live writers, bitter and hungover, at 3 am.

Stars are introduced with a "look who it is!" kind of shot, maybe because their actual characters are less developed than Antarctic slum housing. So, what the hey! It's Kate Winslet meeting up with Hugh Jackman, testicles hanging from his throat! It's Halle Berry using a prosthetic breast to mix up guacamole because she's playing truth-or-dare with that buddy of Ricky Gervais! It's Anna Faris asking some guy to "poop on me"?!? And on it goes, deeper into the pit of juvenile-antics hell, past the '80s Ring of Lazy Political-Incorrectness (unwisecracks about Asians, black penises and naked women iPod-jectified), through the Inferno of the Fake Frame-Story (what? the non-satire of Hollywood is itself a sketch? now the film's more structureless than a deboned eel), and into the Fiery Lake of the Post-Credits Sketch (a masturbating animated cat "interacts" with faint imitations of our species).

But hey, maybe Movie 43 is so named because it's like one of those many asteroids out there—a dismal chunk of rock hurtling through an empty void, without purpose.
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