Date Movie Review

"Date Movie" reviews

Movie

Date Movie

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-06-02 23:31:21

Rating

0.5/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Date Movie is as crude, tasteless and cheap as a movie the Farrelly brothers might"ve made during adolescence. And since the year has only just begun, let"s tack on 2005 and proclaim this the worst movie of the last year and a quarter… Oh, what the hell—the last decade.

Story

Date Movie doesn"t have a story as much as it does a series of miss-or-really-miss spoofs of date movies and cultural hodgepodge; the thin "story" is just enough to keep the film from being a series of vignettes. Julia (Alyson Hannigan), who makes Big Momma look little, is determined to find her Prince Charming instead of wasting away in her lonely apartment. She briefly finds him in Grant Fonckyerdoder (Adam Campbell) before losing him (so ends any originality). So she visits a date doctor named Hitch (Tony Cox)—yes, that movie—who takes her to get barbaric liposuction. Then she meets Grant again, they fall in love and she meets his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fonckyerdoder (Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge), making for a Meet the Fockers spoof (the biggest spoof-ee). Julia has competition from Grant"s ex (Sophie Monk), allowing for more film references, but ultimately they live clumsily ever after.

Acting

It"s hard to see through the utter mess that is Date Movie enough to evaluate its acting, but Hannigan seems to be at least serviceable. Although, it seems like "acting" here means merely nauseating the audience enough so they can taste the vomit but manage to hold it in. Like when she licks Tony Cox"s face for 15 or so seconds—in slow motion… It"s more Fear Factor than Inside the Actor"s Studio. As for Campbell, Date Movie is his first. There"s no frame of reference whatsoever, and yet it"s still clear that he"s above this. He almost seems like a classically trained actor who"s forced to stretch his comfort zone by performing horrendous impressions, such as the orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally. The lone semblance of a bright spot comes from Coolidge, impersonating Barbra Streisand"s Roz Focker. Again, way too classy for this Movie.

Direction

Date Movie's trailer brags, "From two of the six writers of Scary Movie..." After seeing it you can"t help but muse, "It took two writers for that movie?!" The writers in question are Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who also co-directed. The film should at the very least be an appetizer for Scary Movie 4"s upcoming entrée (to which they did not contribute), but with no hint of continuity or a passable storyline, it even fails that menial task—and where the Scary Movies have succeeded is in the satisfactory stories that surround the film references. The biggest problem, though, lies in the spoofs: While the rules mandate that only chick flicks/date movies can be parodied, the writer/directors abandon their target audience by referencing movies like When Harry Met Sally. Luckily there"s always an audience member who feels the need to solve the conundrum aloud.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 1/2 star.

Copyright © CinemaSource 2006.

Movie

THE DATE MOVIE

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-02-17 16:33:13

Provider

MRIB

Review

Date Movie follows in the plot-free gagfest tradition of the Scary Movie franchise and the long forgotten, much underrated Don't Be A Menace To South Central, this time taking chick-flicks and rom-coms as its target. The writers have worked in a check-list of light comedies and real movie stars to reference, including Bridget Jones, Pretty Woman (lead character Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan) is clearly an amalgam of Ms Roberts and Zellweger), Meet The Parents/Fockers, Wedding Crasher and more, so many more...

Julia is looking for love, so does what Hollywood dictates by visiting a date doctor called hitch, where she finds not Will Smith, but Tony Cox (better known as the midget from Bad Santa), who convinces her to enter Extreme Bachelor: Desperate Edition. There she meets and falls in love with Grant Fonckyerdoder, an upper crust Englishman with questionable sexual escapades in his closet (sound familiar?).

She then has to meet the parents (or the Fonckyerdoders, to give them their full name), providing the opportunity to Jennifer Collidge and Fred Willard to do splendid spoofs of Hoffman and Streisand. Trouble is, all this referential moviemaking ain't all that funny. Hannigan struggles womanfully, but she's no Leslie Nielsen, and Date Movie's response to every situation is to make the gags dirtier, baser and cruder to disguise their lack of genuine wit. It's all good fun for about twenty minutes, but the joke wears a little thin long before its allotted time. If this was a date, some might want to make their excuses and depart while the night was still young.

Copyright © MRIB 2006.