Date Movie (2006)

For the few of you who have been following the Sunday “Bad” Movies each week (or every other week, or month) as I’ve been writing about bad movies, you may have been wondering why I hadn’t yet covered a Friedberg/Seltzer spoof.  You might have been wondering that as I watched a few other spoofs along the way.  I’ve seen 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I also watched A Haunted House.  Then I saw Stan Helsing.  But where were the two guys who have made a name for themselves by producing and directing numerous bad spoofs?  Well, they’re finally here.

This week I watched Date Movie, the duo’s directorial debut.  The movie is a spoof of romantic comedies, making jokes based on the popular movies of the genre.  Most notably, Date Movie pulls elements from Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers because it came out two years after the latter.  Alyson Hannigan is in the lead role as Julia Jones, a lonely fat girl who becomes skinny to win the affection of Grant Funkyerdoder (Adam Campbell).  All the while, Grant’s ex-fiancé Andy (Sophie Monk) tries to sabotage their relationship and Julia’s dad Frank (Eddie Griffin) tries to set Julia up with Nicky (Judah Friedlander).  Throw in a bunch of bottom of the barrel jokes and pop culture references and you get the movie.

Date Movie isn’t quite what you expect out of a movie made by “two of the six writers of Scary Movie,” as they call themselves.  Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are known as the guys whose jokes in their spoofs consist solely of pop culture references that are unrelated to anything that is going on.  Their movies tend to be the hollowest shell of a story packed full of nods to anything and everything in the way of simply pointing out the thing without actually saying anything about it.  And sure, that comes up sometimes throughout the duration of Date Movie.  But they managed to rein it in with their first directorial effort and actually make jokes among the references.

See, there are two ways that you can go with spoofs and both of these ways are present throughout Date Movie.  The way that the directing/writing pair are known for is the bad way to do a spoof.  They take anything that people would recognize and throw it into the movie, regardless of its relation to what is happening, and hope that people will be happy with simply knowing what that thing is.  Then there is the good way, which is also present in the movie in some ways.  This is to take a story and pull out some funny ideas within what they are presenting.  Basically, take what is known and punch it up with jokes.  You lovingly make fun of your subject, rather than try and throw everything in there.  If it fits it fits.  If it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be there.

The tendency of Friedberg and Seltzer seems to be to go to the referential material as much as they possibly can, as seen in movies like Epic Movie and their stinker from 2014, The Starving Games. (Yes, I’m saying this as someone who has seen the majority of their movies. I haven’t yet seen Superfast.)  The story and joking within the story comes second to mentioning any little pop culture tidbit that they can.  There is a scene within The Starving Games in which the main character of Kantmiss Evershot is running through the woods during the titular games.  She encounters the Annoying Orange, since that had been a thing, and then is attacked by fruit and must slice it like in the game Fruit Ninja.  They weren’t jokes, and the time that they were present did not constitute them being in the movie.  There were no later callbacks to these references.  They were there only to be there because the directors felt it necessary to mention them.  Rather than spoofing The Hunger Games, the movie was a regurgitation of anything that happened in pop culture during the previous year.

It is a shame that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer went down this path since there are hints of great comedy throughout Date Movie.  The movie is not as reliant upon making references as their later work would be.  Instead, they take the formula of a romantic comedy and punch it up with jokes in the way that classic spoofs like Airplane! and Spaceballs did, albeit not as funny as those two.  Visual gags such as a bunch of island natives holding big drinks that are labelled “Big Ass Drink” or a recurring spray bottle hummus joke work much better than the moment when Frodo goes into a jewelry shop and tries to sell the one ring.  The dialogue is written with jokes rather than references, such as when Grant says, “You’re going to take me down to Chinatown?” and Frank replies with, “Chinatown? I’ll take your bitch as down to 134^th Street and bust you in the head with a pipe.”  There’s actual thought put into the script which makes for a better movie and a better viewing experience.

These two men could make fantastic spoofs if they wanted to.  They have the talent to do show, as showcased in bits and pieces throughout Date Movie.  They can write some good jokes.  If they would just leave the bare bones references out of their work, there could be a lot more to like about the guys.  But they chose their path.  There is no changing that.  The movies that they put out after Date Movie did away with most of the joke writing and instead focused the writing on including any little piece of pop culture that they could.  It hurt the story and the laughs, leaving only a migraine and wasted time behind.

Date Movie is not all bad.  It isn’t quite the bad spoof that I’ve come to expect out of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.  There are some shining moments in here and some good quality jokes.  It hurts to know that they left that behind when they moved on with their careers.  Oh, what could have been.  There will always be this decent spoof that isn’t terrible.  They have one okay moment in their directing filmography.  If only that had continued.

And now for some notes:

• Date Movie was suggested to me by @Aaronthenia.  Thanks for suggesting it.  I have gained a new appreciation of this one.
• I mentioned that Eddie Griffin was in Date Movie.  He was previously seen in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in the two Deuce Bigalow movies.
• Matt Austin was in Date Movie.  He has already been in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in a movie called A Crush on You.
• Another actor in Date Movie was Mark Chadwick, who was previously in Batman & Robin.
• Finally, there is Carmen Electra.  She was in the final scene of Date Movie.  She was in an early Sunday “Bad” Movie called 2-Headed Shark Attack.
• Have you seen Date Movie?  Have you seen anything by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer?  Do you like spoofs?  There’s a comments section to discuss anything related to this movie.
• You can also suggest future Sunday “Bad” Movies in the comments section.  I am currently working on the next part of the schedule and could use some suggestions.  You could also try suggesting them to me on Twitter.
• Speaking of 2-Headed Shark Attack, next week’s movie is 3-Headed Shark Attack.  That’s right, I’m tackling another sequel to a movie I’ve already covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’ve done that twice recently, with Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman, and The Marine 4: Moving Target.  What will this one have in store for me?  Who knows?  I’ll tell you next week.