Cinepub

There will come a time in human history when we’ll have to look back on what we’ve done collectively as a species. Genocide, global warming, war… There’s a lot we have to feel guilty about is what I’m saying. And now, thanks to Peter Farrelly, we have a new atrocity to add to that list in the form of a steaming cinematic turd named ‘Movie 43’. Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t even now where to begin.

Ok, so this movie has two versions. Living in the UK, I saw the one released here which involves three teenagers trying to find the eponymous Movie 43, the most banned film in the world because watching it will lead to the destruction of the world somehow. During their internet search they come across several vignettes which make up the bulk of the film. The really shocking thing and the reason that this film has gotten any exposure at all, rather than being left on the trash heap of cinematic history as it so rightly deserves, is that for some reason this film stars actual people that you’ve actually heard of. I mean real famous actors like Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Emma Stone, Halle Berry and many, many more. I don’t know why these people agreed to be in this. Maybe they thought they’d get to seem like they had a sense of humour or that they’d be perceived as being edgy in some way. I’m sure that the fact that these were shorts meaning they could be done relatively quickly also helped to convince a few of them in some way.

To say that this film is not funny would be like saying…. I don’t know. There isn’t anything I can compare it to which will properly convey how funny Movie 43 isn’t. It’s like comedy got cancer and people were actively preventing a cure from being found. It is to comedy what the vacuum of space is to human survival.

The majority of the sketches focus on some form of gross out, politically incorrect or absurd premise which can make for some great comedy. Here, though, it’s just terrible. The reason? Everyone is trying so desperately hard to be funny. It’s like those fucking ‘Insert Genre Here’ Movie movies and parody films like them where they’re afraid you might not get the joke so they hammer it hard leaving you with absolutely no doubt what it is that they are trying to parody. At least with those movies the joke is pretty quick and moves on to the next thing. With Movie 43, whole segments revolve around one joke and they hammer it so hard that all that’s left at the end is the joke’s smashed corpse and nobody is laughing.

For example, Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet’s segment is about the fact that Hugh Jackman has balls on his neck. That’s the joke. It’s like the filmmakers saw ‘Men In Black II’ and decided the Ballchinian deserved something more than the few seconds he got on screen. GAHFUCKINGFUCKITYFUCK!

Excuse me. Look, don’t see this movie. If you somehow end up in a situation where you have to choose between this and suicide, well, I mean you should probably just watch this because it’s only an hour and forty minutes long and suicide is forever but if you’re the kind of person who finds themselves in that kind of situation you probably deserve it. I can say there was one moment that elicited a chuckle from me and that was when Emma Stone says “He was a Wizard!” in response to some asking her about sucking off a hobo for magic beans. It’s really more her delivery than the script though. Man, Emma Stone is great. Ok, this seems to be devolving in to some stream of consciousness thing so I’m just gonna rate this thing and get the fuck out of here. I give this film I have only ever given once before. This film gets Unicum, Hungary’s national drink, out of five. If you’ve ever tasted Unicum then you know why. Laterz.