In one of the most grotesque and offensive movies to date, “Movie 43” makes it clear from the first scene on who it’s trying to target: young laughter-seeking suckers who will just laugh at about anything that Hollywood throws at them, no matter how degrading its shoddy source material may be.
I unfortunately sometimes have a tendency to fall into that category.
Comedy is one of my favorite genres. Most of my reviews are comedies.
But I would be lying to you if I said we’re in the golden age of comedies. Gone are the days of Mel Brooks (“History of the World, Part I,” “Blazing Saddles”) and Jim Abrahams (“Airplane!”) movies.
I’d love to hear what those two have to say about the constant flow of comedy trash that’s spilling out of Hollywood these days.
“Movie 43” is among them. In fact, this is probably comedy’s lowest point, if it could get any lower.
Even the “Scary Movie” franchise, which is somewhat respectable in its own right, cannot touch the sheer egregious tone that this film possesses.
Hollywood continues to experiment with our minds on how far we can go to accept grotesqueness and insensitivity as a form of entertainment.
Unlike the “Scary Movie” franchise and its spinoffs, “Movie 43” contains no plot. Instead, it’s a collection of 11 short skits stitched together to form a movie.
The movie is promoted as having interconnected stories, but honestly none of these skits have any sort of relation with one another. Like a bad episode of “Family Guy” in which cutaway gags can interchangeably be placed in any part of an episode, the skits for “Movie 43” can be swapped around and it wouldn’t affect the story at all.
The skits are told through the parent skit, “The Pitch,” whichhas Dennis Quaid playing what appears to be an unkempt hobo trying to hopelessly sell his vile script to a movie executive (Greg Kinnear).
The audience is then treated to, or in a way punished with, 11 unrelated shorts.
It’s hard to cleanly describe these skits in a way that wouldn’t offend the average reader.
From Chloe Grace Mertz playing a young teenage girl experiencing her first moments of womanhood, to a short featuring an animated cat named “Beezel” showing a little too much affection toward his owner, these skits lack any sort of substance.
Sure, you’ll laugh. For some of you, it might be a guilty pleasure to watch this.
Just because something is funny, though, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a well done film. This isn’t a memorable comedy like “Airplane!” where you could watch it again and again, and might laugh even harder the second time than the first time you watched it.
Depending upon your tastes, this is a movie that will have a narrow value of entertainment awaiting you at best. However, regardless of a viewer’s taste, this is not a movie that will leave you hungry to watch a second time.
