Superfast! (2015)

This weekend saw the release of the eight installment in the Fast and Furious franchise.  The series of action films has experienced a few makeovers throughout the sixteen years that it been around.  The first was an American street racing movie that ripped its story from Point Break.  The third movie took the action to Japan for some drifting fun.  The fourth movie began a transition into the crazy action that the series would become.  At this point, the movies are about action involving cars, rather than street racing.  The metamorphosis is insane, and the movies even more so.

What becomes even more interesting is that the franchise has remained a money maker for Universal.  People want to see the Fast and Furious movies.  The worldwide box office returns have risen with every installment since the fourth.  Furious 7 even surpassed the one billion dollar mark.  That’s how big the franchise is.  As with any franchise of this size, people were going to parody it.  There was bound to be some sort of spoof made for franchise with this much cultural impact.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have come up in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before.  They directed Date Movie, which was covered just over a year ago.  They also tend to come up in any discussion about spoofs because of how often they have dipped their toes into that kind of filmmaking.  They are the modern face of spoofs.  They continued their line of spoofs with the 2015 release of Superfast!, meant to coincide with the release of Furious 7.

Superfast! starred Alex Ashbaugh as Lucas White, an undercover police officer thrown into the street racing world of Vin Serento (Dale Pavinski).  Through a mish-mash of Fast and Furious story elements, they go from street racers to stealing money from a wealthy crime lord.  Many of the memorable characters were made light of throughout the movie, as well as the tropes that the franchise has established within itself.

Like a number of my more recent posts, I am going to highlight some moments from Superfast!  Liking this more than most of the Friedberg/Seltzer movies means that it will be discussed in a fairly positive light.  Surprising, I know.  But it’s like they actually tried with this one instead of going for their standard name dropping routine, and the jokes landed because of it.  There were a few laughs, which is more than can be said of most of their movies.

The Character Work

Superfast! was a fairly direct spoof of the Fast and Furious movies.  It stayed close enough to the material to use storylines and characters that the target audience would be familiar with.  This included Vin Serento (based on Dom Torretto, but using the first name of actor Vin Diesel), the leader of the street racing gang.  Dale Pavinski did a great job of playing the character like Vin Diesel, but bringing a comedic edge.  He wasn’t too obvious or on the nose.  The situations brought the silly comedy.  It was a near perfect performance.

Also notable was Daniel Booko, who played Curtis.  The character was based on Vince from the first and fifth installments of the Fast and Furious franchise.  The performance was accurate with his suspicion of the main character, in this case Lucas White (playing off the name of Lucas Black, star of Tokyo Drift).  In The Fast and the Furious, Vince was suspicious of Brian, thinking he was an undercover cop.  The homoerotic jealousy was brought to the forefront of Superfast!, with Curtis being outright jealous of Vin’s new friendship with Lucas.  It took what already sort of existed in the source and brought that to the front with some funny results.

Finally, Dio Johnson shined as Detective Johnson, the agent tasked with capturing the street racing crew.  He worked with the already heightened aspects of Luke Hobbs from the Fast and Furious movies.  Present were his head movements, his abrasive personality, and the oiled arms.  It was the perfect sendup to a character that everyone quickly fell in love with when he was added in the fifth installment.

The Pop Culture References

Aside from the fact that Superfast! was spoofing another movie, there weren’t a whole lot of pop culture references in the way that Freidberg/Seltzer usually include them.  There weren’t random characters from whatever was popular when it was made being shoved down the throats of viewers.  The action didn’t stop so that the main character could play Fruit Ninja and talk to the Annoying Orange.  There were some references, but they weren’t as bad as in Disaster Movie or The Starving Games.

Two main references come to mind when trying to think of what topics were mentioned in Superfast!  One was a series of references that Lucas White used to describe himself.  It culminated in him sitting on some pavement and performing the cup song from Pitch Perfect.  It was more than just dropping a name, which made it work.  The other moment was when the bad guy, Juan Carlos de la Sol (Omar Chaparro) yelled at his henchman for not getting him the Minions toy that would complete his collection.  The fact that it was a character building dialogue scene involving the Minions property was some effort that the directors don’t usually put into their movies.  These references were a step in the right direction.

Self-Referential Material

Some directors, writers, and producers like to have connections between their own works.  Friedberg/Seltzer seem to be the same way.  Though the connection might not be as obvious as an actor in every project, or a common group of characters like the MCU, they still have references to their other work scattered throughout the things they do.  And yes, they do like to bring actors back.  Superfast! featured someone who was in their previous movie, Best Night Ever.

The real thing that I want to make note of was something pointed out in the post for Date Movie.  There was a joke near the end of that movie where some people were holding giant cups with the name “Big Ass Drink” on them.  That sort of came back in Superfast!  The climax involved the characters stealing a vault from a restaurant called “Big Ass Tacos,” which served giant tacos.  It was the same joke put into a new shell.  Some people might think of that as unoriginal, but I would call it a recurring gag.

That’s all I’m going to write for now.  I have one more week of school, which means tests and final projects that need to be finished.  There’s not too much time to go rambling on with the post.  Superfast! was a step up for Friedberg/Seltzer, especially coming off the last spoof they did (The Starving Games), which was the worst of the bunch.  They reigned in their name dropping tendencies and decided to try telling jokes.  It’s not the greatest spoof ever made.  Not by a longshot.  But it was entertaining.  It was funny.  It featured effort.  At least they put effort into it.

Now it’s time for me to put a little bit of effort into these notes:

• Date Movie was mentioned in this post.
• A movie important to the whole Fast and Furious world is a movie called Torque.
• Amin Joseph was one of the actors in Superfast! He was featured early in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in the movie Freelancers.
• Superfast! was the second appearance for Nick Rey Angelus, who was in The Summer of Massacre.
• Daniel Booko, who played Curtis, was in Bratz: The Movie.
• An actor named Rick Silver showed up in Superfast! after being in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3.
• Michael Flores was in both Superfast! and The Human Centipede III.
• Finally, Chris Pang had the role of Cool Asian Guy in Superfast!  He was also in I, Frankenstein.
• Have you seen Superfast!?  Have you seen any of the Fast and Furious movies?  Have you seen any Friedberg/Seltzer movies?  Put your thoughts in the comments.  I’d love to read them.
• I’d also love to read any suggestions that you guys might have.  If there are movies you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• Add me on snapchat.  My username is jurassicgriffin.  This past week, I shared a picture of someone’s boxers that were left behind a toilet at school.  If that sounds interesting to you, I might be interesting to you.
• Next week is another franchise week here at the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  What better way to celebrate the week after Easter than with a franchise that I chose because of Easter?  I’ll be watching the two God’s Not Dead movies for next week, so come on back here to see what I have to say about them.  Spoiler: I don’t like the first one.