Disaster Movie review

From the makers of Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie, this movie isei fasefhsefs;eflkkk asfea AWAKE! Which is more than Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer were when they penned this descriptively-titled movie. The pair of them worked on the adequate Spy Hard and the very funny Scary Movie, before taking the latter on to a franchise that puts about as much effort into pop culture references as the average episode of Family Guy. And you see that there? The hackneyed Family Guy reference? That joke is about three times as fresh as what you’ll find in this movie. The plot – or the notion of it – is that a group of twentysomethings have to escape a city before it’s destroyed by various disasters. There are many obvious movies this could heavily borrow from, but the nods to Cloverfield and the like are few and far between. Instead, it tries to take in literally everything else, but so many potential jokes in this movie have been clearly covered in the quickfire series that there’s nothing left to do. As a result, the ‘scattergun’ mode is set to maximum: Amy Winehouse is a prophet of doom, Hannah Montana gets crushed beneath an asteroid, and so on. The small mercy is that there are few jokes that are outright distasteful or obscene. Even fart and crap jokes are kept to a surprising handful. But the replacement isn’t better gags, just…no gags. You really start noticing the lack of them when you start noticing really obvious ones they should have made and just didn’t bother with. If you’re going to spoof the Sex and the City girls, surely it’s just plain common sense to have Samantha played by a comedy OAP? Why is Sarah Jessica Parker being played by a man, when surely a horse with a wig on would have people rolling in the aisles? There is the odd glimmer of talent among the cast. A meths-addled version of the princess from Enchanted manages to brighten up the second half with squealy giggling and unhinged drug-lust, and lead rent-a-hunk Matt Lanter takes a temporary break from looking unsettlingly like Marc Blucas for just long enough to put in a decent turn as Zac Ephron. But really, this is digging through nonsensical and lazy lampooning to find the slivers of cheer that stops you walking out the cinema early.