A movie featuring a midget hitting a man with a baseball bat should be funnier than this.
"Date Movie" Review
Alyson Hannigan- Julia Jones
Adam Campbell- Grant Fonckyerdoder
Tony Cox- Hitch
Eddie Griffin- Frank Jones
Fred Willard- Mr. Fonckyerdoder
Jennifer Coolidge- Mrs. Fonckyerdoder
Sophie Monk- Andy
Judah Friedlander- Nicky
Josh Meyers- Napoleon
Carmen Electra- Herself
Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Screenplay by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox
Rated PG-13 for continuous crude and sexual humor, including language.
Runtime- 85 minutes
Website: http://www.datemoviethemovie.com/
"Date Movie" is one of those big honking movie parodies that takes bits and pieces from other flicks, serious and comedy alike, and then alters them, spins them, and, well, makes fun of them. If you've seen an advertisement for "Date Movie" you'll notice how the producers emphasize how it comes from "2 of the 6 writers of ‘Scary Movie,'" a recent series of straight up parody flicks created by Keenan Ivory Wayans (parts 1 and 2) and now under the watchful guidance of David Zucker and Pat Proft, probably most well known for the classics "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" trilogy. Fairly decent comedy company. So why the heck didn't they do "Date Movie" and keep that streak of somewhat success going? Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the two of the six responsible for "Date Movie," try very hard to come up with something worthwhile. They try very, very hard. They just don't succeed.
The flick starts off promising enough, with Julia Jones (the cute Alyson Hannigan in a fat suit) having a dream where she's a blushing bride walking down the aisle to marry Napoleon Dynamite (Josh Meyers, who shows up again later in the flick with a huge prosthetic nose doing Owen Wilson. He should have been doing Raymond Luxury Yacht because that would have been super funny). She then wakes up, realizes that she's a fat loser and writes in her diary and decides to seize the day and find her man. She really, really, really wants to find true love. So she goes out into the street and does a series of provocative hip shaking dances to the "Milkshake" song, hoping that helps her find true love. After a construction guy shoots a nail into his head, a cabby throws up after Julia manages to somehow swing her giant breasts around to her back, she gets hit by a fire hose, and then gets ignored by a jumbly gay fat guy she decides to give up for today and go to work at her family's restaurant. Julia's father, Frank (Eddie Griffin supposedly doing a cross of Robert Deniro from "Meet the Parents" and Michael Constantine in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" all the while looking and actually doing Keith David from "There's Something About Mary) tells her that she has to get married to a guy with the same kind of family background as her: Greek (Eddie is full blooded Greek in this. Yeah), Indian, Japanese, and Jewish, and it just so happens there's a guy working at the restaurant who just fits that description. Nicky (Judah Friedlander), a workman with a rat in his butt. Julia doesn't want to marry that guy. While serving coffee she meets Grant Fonckyerdoder (Adam Campbell), an Englishman. Grant likes Julia despite her girth issues but doesn't say much (and Julia is too shy to say anything anyway).
Julia decides that she has to find true love (she goes back to that feeling). She goes to meet Hitch. In this movie, instead of Will Smith, Hitch is played by seminal midget actor Tony Cox (he is, without question, the highlight of the movie. He's responsible for all kinds of failed marriages. He just doesn't know it. Funny). Julia pays Hitch to make her beautiful, desirable, and more confident. Hitch "pimps her up" in a local custom cat body shop (we got disgusting toenails from "Dumb and Dumber," Kevin James' hairy back times a hundred from "Hitch," a Darth Vader from "Revenge of the Sith" shot) and lo and behold, Julia is "gorgeous." She decides to go on a reality TV show called "Extreme Bachelor: Desperate Edition" where the bachelor is Grant. After shotgun blasting the women he doesn't want he picks Julia and takes her to dinner (that's part of the game show's prize). Then we get the "When Harry Met Sally" dinner orgasm scene, this time with the man faking the orgasm, and Julia tells Grant that she wants to become a pastry chef. Grant loves that she has a dream, falls in love with her even more, and then helps her beat up and mug a derelict on the street. They go back to her apartment and have sex (the crazy old woman with the cats, the woman Julia doesn't want to become, watches) and then decide to get married. Grant goes to meet Julia's parents (this is where Griffin should have shined big time. All he does is a restrained Deniro/David and goes through the "Meet the Parents" motions. The dead mother in the urn scene is funny because it's unexpected. When Jinxy the cat has sex with the rotting corpse, suddenly we're in Triple H as Kane having sex with a corpse territory, meaning it was funny for about thirty seconds and then just stopped being funny). We get to see Jinxy take a serious dump in the toilet (this scene is pretty funny). So then we get to meet Grant's parents. They would be Mr. and Mrs. Fonckyerdoder (Fred Willard doing Fred Willard playing Dustin Hoffman and Stifler's Mom, Jennifer Coolidge, doing Barbara Streisand), a scene that falls flat because all it does is directly ape off the "Meet the Fockers" scene of the same origin.
So then the movie sort of meanders for a bit, where we get the "Along Came Polly's" fat sweaty guy nipple basketball scene, a "Wedding Planner" spoof (Jello, a Latina with a huge destructive butt), and some other unfunny hooha. Grant reveals that his best man is his former girlfriend Andy (Sophie Monk), a hot blonde constantly wearing a skimpy swimsuit or dress. She enters the flick doing the Paris Hilton washing a car while eating a hamburger commercial thing, and suddenly we have tension. Julia feels inadequate next to Miss Blonde Boob model and takes Grant to therapy. We then get "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" therapy, a "Pretty Woman" scene where the hooker is the man, a "What Women Want" parody, and then a quite funny "Kill Bill" sequence where the Bride's revenge music keeps playing over and over again.
This reviewer doesn't want to reveal any more of the "story" as it goes off into several other movies and situations, some that work, others that don't. Suffice to say, we get an old woman having sex with a cat, a midget with a baseball bat, midget dancing, a very unfunny "Lord of the Rings" goof that just dies as soon as it starts, and Carmen Electra in a skimpy bikini getting felt up by a giant hairy finger. It all sounds better than it is.
Alyson Hannigan does a fine job in the lead. She's always smiling, always waiting to break out into some goofiness, and in this flick she's willing to do whatever it takes to make the audience laugh. She should have better stuff to work with, though. Adam Campbell doesn't really do much and doesn't really complement Hannigan at all. He's doing Hugh Grant when he should have been doing John Corbett (if they wanted someone to do Hugh Grant they should have just got Hugh Grant. The man is a walking parody of himself). Again, Eddie Griffin is someone who should absolutely shine in this flick. He should be nasty, nasty, nasty, but he isn't. Everything he does is restrained. In fact, everything in the flick is restrained (the actors actually make a comment about the flick's PG-13 rating during the credits, a bit of self awareness that is sad, not funny). This movie should be raunchy, disgusting, dang near offensive (they should have used the template created by "Not Another Teen Movie," not the greatest movie parodying other movies but at least that tried and succeeded most of the time) instead of the "hold it all back so we can get more teens in" mess it turned out to be. Perhaps all of that stuff was filmed but is being held for the DVD release? A movie like this shouldn't hold back, not for one second. If it holds back, if it decides to take the safe route and do something it has no business doing, it just isn't going to work. That's what happened here.
Too bad. This reviewer really wanted to like it. Really. The bit where objects are named what they are (like the newspaper is "The Newspaper") is funny. Why couldn't there have been more of that?
You can go see it if you have nothing else to do and you're not into boredom. Otherwise you should just wait for the DVD. Take it out of the library.
See it only if you have to.
The 411: “Date Movie” is a movie parodying other movies in the romantic chick flick date genre. It tries very hard to work, tries very hard to succeed, but it fails dang near every time. Alyson Hannigan is the only bright spot in the flick besides Tony Cox. The script for the flick probably read better than it filmed. They also should have found a better director. It’s all just too bad.
