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.

Outcast (2015) and Reputations Based on One Bad Performance

Sometimes there are strange coincidences when it comes to scheduling the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  There are certain movies that I plan ahead to make sure they come out at a certain week.  When I scheduled Warriors of Virtue, I wanted to make sure that it came out when the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was being released since the concepts are fairly similar.  This week wasn’t a week where I had planned out what I was going to watch to time it with anything.  It was simply that a movie I was semi-interested in got suggested, so I threw it into the schedule.  The lining up of the movie with an event, in this case the first appearance of Nicolas Cage in the blog and his birthday, was not in my mind when I made the schedule.  It just happened.  It was complete coincidence.

The movie this week, by the way, is a movie called Outcast.  It is a 2014 movie that got pushed to a North American direct-to-video release in early 2015.  The main story is about a Chinese prince (I forget his name) who must escape his brother (whose name I also forget) or else he will be murdered.  With the help of his sister Lian (Yifei Liu), swordsman Jacob (Hayden Christensen), and warrior Gallain (Nicolas Cage), he tries to keep his land safe and the throne out of his brother’s clutches.

 I could take the easy route with this post and write a review for the movie.  I could mention all of the Dutch angles that made the movie seem like someone’s tripod was bent 45 degrees.  I might be able to discuss the one shot that goes to the point of view of a bucket of water emptying out on Hayden Christensen’s face.  I would also take some time out to write about Nicolas Cage’s performance and how it deserves to be included in the pantheon of insane Nicolas Cage performances.  All of this stuff could make for a fairly interesting review of a movie that not too many people have seen.  But that isn’t what I’m going to discuss because another idea came up, and it’s an idea that I don’t believe I have written about yet.

As has already been stated twice in this post, Hayden Christensen is one of the stars of Outcast.  He plays Jacob, a swordsman who was once a part of the crusades.  A while later, he is dealing with the atrocities he witnessed during his fighting time, and he gets brought into the voyage of the prince and princess.  Hayden Christensen is what inspired this week’s idea for me.  He is the reason that this movie is going to end up the way it ends up.

Hayden Christensen is an actor with a bad reputation in terms of the quality of his output.  You could say that Nicolas Cage is also one of these guys.  There is one major difference between the two actors and their reputations, however.  Nicolas Cage has built his career on the lunacy that he puts into his performances.  Whether it be his reciting of the alphabet in Vampire’s Kiss, his grabbing of a choir girl’s ass in Face/Off, or his screaming about bees in The Wicker Man, Nicolas Cage has made us know and love when he goes crazy in movies.  Hayden Christensen, however, has gained his reputation as a bad actor through one franchise and the bad performance he gives in it.

Star Wars.  You know Star Wars.  It’s that franchise that put out a new movie less than a month ago and is already breaking every box office record known.  Well, remember back in the early to mid-2000s when George Lucas was putting out the prequel trilogy?  I’m sure you do.  I’m sure you also know that Hayden Christensen was the star of two of them.  The performances that he gave in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith have overwhelmed everything else in his career.  Even when he turns out a decent performance, as he does in Outcast (or my favourite of his movies, Takers), people still only associate him with their negative feelings of his Star Wars performances.  He still gets called names like “Mannequin Skywalker” or “Blandakin Skywalker.”  One franchise has become his defining reputation.

Is he the only actor to have one bad role overwhelm their entire career?  Not at all.  There’s even another person who played Anakin Skywalker that gets the same sort of bad reputation due to that one role.  Jake Lloyd played Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace.  You know, the podracing kid who got into a fighter and shot down a bunch of bad guys.  The kid that was too old to train as a Jedi even though Luke would later do that while being quite a bit older.  Lloyd’s role as Anakin Skywalker was such a bad mark on his acting career that it caused him to quit acting altogether.  People at school would make fun of him with lightsaber noises and such nonsense.  Even being in one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, Jingle All the Way, couldn’t rid Jake Lloyd of the reputation he got from playing the young Skywalker.

There are other non-Star Wars actors who also gained bad reputations through one movie.  The one that comes to mind first for me is Tommy Wiseau.  If you have any interest in bad movies at all, you should know who Tommy Wiseau is.  He is the legend behind the 2003 bad movie classic, The Room.  He wrote, directed, and starred in the movie that has made his name live on in infamy.  This case is slightly different than the other two, though.  For years, this was the only thing that Tommy Wiseau had done in terms of narrative film.  The stuff he has worked on since can all be attributed to him being the guy from The Room.  That’s the only reason people want to work with him.  The crazy story of that movie and the man himself has been written about in the book The Disaster Artist, and is being made into a movie starring James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.

Finally, there are all of the actors that end up in adaptations of young adult novels.  If the actors haven’t made a name for themselves beforehand, those movies can end up becoming their defining movies.  Daniel Radcliffe has been trying to find the right movies to be respected outside of the Harry Potter movies, but it seems difficult for him to escape that role.  In terms of the bad side of young adult adaptations, there is the Twilight series that has produced both Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner.  Kristen Stewart has recently gained some more respect with roles in movies like The Runaways, Snow White and the Huntsman (even if she’s not in the sequel), and Still Alice.  Taylor Lautner, on the other hand, hasn’t earned the respect that he deserves because people write off the movies he is in.  His work with Adam Sandler hasn’t helped people to consider his acting anything more than bad.  Tracers didn’t even get recognition at all outside of “Oh, Taylor Lautner is in some movie called Tracers.”  This leaves the Twilight movies (his worst performance, from what I’ve seen) as the highlight of his career.

Reputation can mean a lot for how potential audiences view an actor.  A bad reputation based on one movie can take a toll on an actor’s career, as seen with Jake Lloyd who quit acting, or Taylor Lautner and Hayden Christenson who have had a tough time overcoming that one bad role.  There is the odd time that an actor like Tommy Wiseau can just ride the wave and become a star of sorts because of it.  Reputations can change the course of an actor’s career and many times, one movie is the difference between respect and loathing.  If an actor gives a bad performance, it can stick with them forever.

These notes won’t stick with you forever, but they’re going to be here if you need them:

• Outcast was suggested by @TheChewDefense.  He previously suggested Howard the Duck and Tracers.
• Movies I mentioned in this post that I’ve already watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies include Warriors of Virtue, Jingle All the Way, Tracers and The Room.  I mentioned the book The Disaster Artist, which I’ve written about.  And I mentioned Star Wars.  I haven’t watched any Star Wars for the blog, but I’ve watched Starcrash, a rip-off of it.
• Manel Soler was in Outcast.  He was also in a movie called Skin Trade, which I watched a while back.
• Have you seen Outcast?  What did you think of it?  What other actors get bad reputations for one bad role?  You can discuss this stuff in the comments below.
• The comments are also a good place to suggest movies for me to watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movie weeks.  I need to make up the next part of the schedule soon, so it wouldn’t hurt to suggest something.  You could also contact me on Twitter to suggest movies.
• Next week’s movie is going to be Date Movie.  I saw it once before.  I despised it once before.  I am worried about this.  I might be a different person next week.  We’ll see.
• Happy birthday Nicolas Cage.