There are several things to like about Superhero Movie. Firstly, it sticks to its genre. There are no weird cross genre-references like in Scary Movie 4 (Brokeback Mountain anyone?) or pointless references to other comedies as in Date Movie (why re-enact Wedding Crashers or Meet the Parents, for crying out loud?). This is commendable, but it’s also a little disappointing to note that Superhero movie simply doesn’t lampoon enough films. It sticks mainly to Spider-Man, which is fine, but ignores such obvious targets like Ghost Rider or Superman Returns, and barely touches Batman Begins. And what about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Surely that was crying out for parody…

Like all films with traces of Zucker, there’s a: plenty of pratfalls, and b: Leslie Nielsen. The former are always bound to raise a giggle, but seeing Nielsen delivering gross out punch lines simply seems wrong. Christopher McDonald, Keith David and Jeffrey Tambor join a relatively unknown cast, though none really have a chance to impress. Another problem with these films post-Scary Movie is that they don’t have a brilliantly funny lead like Anna Faris. As the main character, she really saved those flicks from the worst jokes. In Superhero Movie, our leads Drake Bell and Sara Paxton simply play it straight.

The film claims to be 85 minutes, but isn’t being entirely honest. The end credits are broken up with DELETED SCENES, which is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s almost like they were determined to break the 80 minute mark, so bypassed DVD sales completely.

Overall, this film is mildly amusing and not exactly terrible. It really could have been more intelligent and deconstructed the comic book tradition a little more, but I guess no one expects them to set the bar high, since all of these damn movies seem to make a fortune at the box office. The only other thing worth mentioning is Miles Fisher taking off the Tom Cruise Church of Scientology recruitment video which circulated on YouTube – his performance is uncanny.

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A concise summary of the ‘plot’ of Meet the Spartans is not possible, but suffice it to say that the film generally follows the outline of last year’s 300, with detours along the way to reference other recent films and pop culture icons. King Leonidas of Sparta (Sean Maguire) is visited by an emissary, who states an army of millions will overrun Sparta unless Leonidas accepts the God-King Xerxes (Ken Davitian) as his leader. Killing the emissary, Leonidas sets his small army on course for annihilation.

The ‘humour’ in Meet the Spartans seems to revolve solely around the idea that the Spartans as portrayed in 300 might have been gay. The leather thongs and ridiculous abs of 300 are given a going over, and yet none of what Meet the Spartans has to say is even remotely amusing. Perhaps this is because most who watched 300 recognised the ridiculousness of the costumes and makeup and don’t need it revisited. Alternatively, it could be that movies that rely for a laugh on the suggestion that someone is homosexual belong to another era. Either way, Meet the Spartans falls appallingly short of comedy.

If an appearance in a spoof movie can be used as as measure of impending career annihilation, the stars of Meet the Spartans had better start applying for waiting gigs in coffee shops – actors such as Kevin Sorbo and Diedrich Bader may not grace our screens again if this abysmal piece of ‘filmmaking’ is anything to go by. In fact it seems hard to imagine any of the cast getting paid work again after this… except Carmen Electra who seems bullet-proof after being employed in FOUR such spoofs since 2006!

That Meet the Spartans is a comedy is true perhaps only in the most abstract sense – the film makes a mockery of those who made it. Writer/director team Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are betrayed as entirely lacking in imagination and surely after being responsible for Scary Movie 1-4, Date Movie, Epic Movie and now Meet the Spartans, someone could let them know this horse they’ve been flogging is well and truly dead.

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Strangely enough the writers seem to have a hard time tying The Village in with Saw, and this would be because THEY BELONG IN DIFFERENT GENRES. There’s something wrong having the Japanese style, maple-enclosed house from The Grudge next door to the downtown terrace backing onto the bridge from War of the Worlds. The writers spend so much time explaining why and how such disparate elements can be intertwined that there’s very little time left for humour.

Oh yes, the humour. Well first of all, the best jokes are in the trailer. Secondly, all the good horror movie cliché-related jokes have been covered in the first two films, so all that’s left is pratfalls and gross-out gags pertaining to bodily functions. The funniest sequence of the film in fact has no relevance to the movie being spoofed, or indeed the scary movie genre at all.

The film has been injected with a decent special effects script, so it only makes it all the more frustrating that the impressive CGI tripods and the scarily made up kid aren’t supported by a decent script.

Anna Faris always seems to come out on top, but in Scary Movie 4 even she is having trouble. Craig Bierko’s performance is great, and he’s unrecognisable from the hero in The Thirteenth Floor (did he have laser hair removal on his stubble?!), and there’s something strange having Bill Pullman play William Hurt, and then having Charlie Sheen play Bill Pullman. Shaquille O’Neal and Dr Phil blunder about hopelessly in the horribly unfunny opening sequence, and we’ve even seen the Oprah moment in the trailer so there’s nothing left to offer there.

Here’s hoping there isn’t another Scary Movie on the way, because there’s only so many ways you can paint a dead donkey red and call it Rudolph. The only good news is that Scary Movie 4 is better than Date Movie. Just.

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Super Troopers was such a great comedy…It’s so sad to see Club Dread fall flat on its face.

The strange thing about this comedy is that it could quite easily have been a serious slasher movie. All the plot elements are there, and there are very little jokes. Some of the gruesome deaths are quite inventive and there are a couple of actually chilling moments.
I’m beginning to think that comedy is a format ill suited to the feature film medium. I think it’s something to do with running time. With a straight comedy film (as opposed to a romantic comedy, which straddles genres) you have to decide exactly how much time will be spent on telling jokes, and how much time will be spent telling the story. If you spend too much time on comedy you get a film like Old School, which I found hilarious but had a weakly confused and rambling plot. If you spend too much time on the story you end up with Club Dread, which simply doesn’t have enough time in which to tell the jokes, what with all the horror movie twists.

That being said, there are two AMAZING jokes in Club Dread equal to the fantastic humour in Broken Lizard’s previous outing, Super Troopers. There’s a decent bunch of actors here, and the production values are pretty good for what was publicised as a throwaway comedy (in fact it looks a lot like the Scooby Doo set).

Super Troopers was a straight out comedy rather than a spoof on a well known genre, and maybe this is part of the problem. So much has been done with the gross-out and slapstick humour of the Scary Movie franchise, not to mention the intelligent and post-modern Scream saga, that there isn’t much material left in a horror spoof.

I will give the Broken Lizard team the benefit of the doubt, and hire their next film, but Club Dread simply wasn’t funny enough (especially for a 113 minute comedy).

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Of course, along with Zucker and co. comes slapstick. It seems that falling over never falls out of fashion. They have stuck to what they’re best at, and almost completely ignored the gross-out humour that was so prevalent in SM1.

Anna Faris is fantastic as always. Honestly that gal cracks me up so much. (I laugh whenever I think of her ‘what are you waiting for?!’ tirade in SM1… unfortunately no one understands what I’m going on about when I quote it in public and then burst into hysterics.) It was good to see her in Lost In Translation, and hopefully there will be more roles on the way, as I’m convinced that such a great comedic performer has enormous potential as a dramatic actor. Charlie Sheen is also great, effectively reprising the type of role he was so good at in Hot Shots. His deadpan delivery of jokes that are so pathetic they’re funny is unequalled. Oh, and it seems that someone has reanimated Leslie Nielsen for this film (really, how OLD is he now?).

The film itself is a bit patchy. Like most comedies (and especially sight-gag comedies) it gets a bit tiring towards the end. There are some great take-offs of horror films this time around as well as (confusingly) some non-horror lampoons (why is 8 Mile included?).

On the DVD we get to see the original climactic scenes, which are completely different to the reshoot that was undertaken. Why on earth they ever thought that the original ending was funny is beyond me. Thank God for reshoots is all I can say.

This is a comedy that gets a high Hoopla Factor but a low rating… it all depends on who you see it with, and what state you’re in at the time. It’s still light years ahead of Scary Movie 2, though…

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