Movie Review: The Comebacks
I wanted to do a one-line review of this film: This film is shit, just pure shit. And then leave it at that. And that’s all you really need to know, actually. Not once was there anything funny in this sports movie parody. But then the movie crossed unfunny territory that really made me angry. For instance, what the hell is the lovely, talented Melora Hardin (Jan Levinson from The Office) doing in this?
And David Koechner, who I know can be funny, has been in almost every unfunny movie this year: Reno 911, Balls of Fury, The Brothers Solomon, and you can go back into 2006 and find a bunch of nonsense, too. This guy is a paycheck performer. Write any crap and he’ll appear in it.
I just hate it when comedy is lazy, and this is as lazy as it gets. Just no setup, or comic timing, or worthy targets. Absolutely no edge to the proceedings. The thing is, the conventional sports movie should get a good skewering, but done by people who know comedy and know the nuances of a joke. It is this clueless attempt at laughs that make me jealous of the creators of Epic Movie and Date Movie, people with no talent being given gobs of money to do something a four-year-old could dream up.
Another problem comes from the need to combine every single example of a genre into a film and make it the plot. Airplane!, The Naked Gun, and Top Secret!, all from the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams, basically picked a genre and made fun of the conventions of airplane movies, cop movies, World War II resistance movies. And if they spoofed a particular movie, it wouldn’t be inserted into the film as a “Hey, look at this, we’re doing this movie. You know this movie, right? Hey, you’ll laugh because you’ll know what we’re referencing.”
Add to that, apparently people being hit by buses and going through extreme physical adversity is just hi-larious to people making spoofs nowadays.
There’s a joke in the movie that the coach is upset with his players for making the dean’s list, and that he wants them to do all the bad things that we associate with college athletics and the news nowadays. This is a joke that could have been very good under different guidance, but here it only invites the sound of crickets.
So, I think I’ve gotten my point across, here. These spoof movies have taken the legacy of the Zucker Brothers and have distorted it into lazy, unfunny comedy. And, oh goody, a movie called Meet the Spartans, spoofing 300, complete with a Britney-Spears-gets-kicked-into-the-pit joke, is just waiting to be unleashed on the “masses” soon. They’re so cheap to produce when no one makes any effort, that any amount of money is a success unfortunately. Please stop going to these flicks, people. Please. Until they right the ship and make something worthwhile (not likely, I’m afraid).
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