Epic Movie: Critic Reviews

Despite all the scatological high jinks on display, most of the satire is affectionate rather than merciless.

Thankfully, the crude, scatological parody Epic Movie, unlike the movies it sends up, is short.

What you miss most is the shamelessness and wit that Anna Faris and Regina Hall have brought to four installments of Scary Movie. In lieu of those two, there are exploding pimples, a tongue frozen on a pole, and industrial-strength projectile.

How can you make fun of such self-aware subjects as Borat or Johnny Depp's winkingly fey Jack Sparrow? Who hasn't already noticed Tom Hanks' bad Da Vinci Code hair? And really, is there anything left to say about Samuel L. Jackson and those snakes?

The cinematic equivalent of a tapeworm, this delivers few laughs beyond the initial chuckles of recognition.

Extravagantly [expends] elaborate sets, special-effects, music, costumes and actor look-alikes for the sake of a few lame gags and a legion of crotch-kicks.

The makers of Epic Movie have just discovered the existence of urine, vomit and pimples, and declared them hilarious.

Pity [the producers] couldn't find anything funny to do once they'd built the sets, and found dead ringers for Anna Paquin, Paris Hilton, P. Diddy and Jack Black.

You know a movie parody is in trouble when you can't quite figure out the frame of reference for the parody.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer must be stopped. For the last 10 years, this filmmaking team has created a series of spoof movies so feeble, shoddy and unfunny that they may be part of a diabolical, Manchurian Candidate-like plot.

Bad taste and worse jokes abound. Epic Movie's humor isn't tired; it's comatose.

Writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer seem to think a half-baked imitation of the original constitutes instant comic gold.

The film never becomes anything of its own, however; it merely jumps from spoof to spoof, often with tenuous transitions.

The real problem with Epic Movie is that while it does a decent job imitating films, it never bothers to make fun of or have fun with them.

Raunchy blockbuster spoof is over the top, dumb.

It plays out like an overlong Comedy Central skit lurching for the next laugh without any remorse for the gross misfires in between.

Maybe these movies are popular, but it seems they just keep getting more inane with each variation on the theme.

sucks

just a pastiche of pop culture crap that's formed into a monstrous bastard of unfunny physical comedy, awful acting, and jokes that are outright flat on delivery...

The parody is not a bad genre, as the early Zucker films showed us. It's just been put in the control of bad filmmakers.

This one is a typical time-waster for teenagers or others with disposable income and underdeveloped taste.

This movie is like a sneeze of bad jokes splattering its germs into the air we all breathe.

There's very little that's Epic about Epic Movie. While the film has plenty of fun, it's little more than a late-night comic sketch stretched to feature length.

Go rent Blazing Saddles instead.

...juvenile at best and flat-out lame at worst...