If he likes the Marx Brothers, then he's a keeper!

He needs to see Duck Soup. Rufus T. Firefly is one of my personal heroes (and was very nearly my S.F. handle, incidentally).

I finally got around to seeing The Big Lebowski after years of friends telling me to check it out. All I knew before seeing it was that it concerned bowling. >>I actually thought it was just about bowling, so the whole kidnapping plot threw me for a loop. But I did enjoy it's weirdness. Especially all the trippy scenes, like the one from the perspective of the bowling ball.<<

Agreed except that Horse Feathers is actually the best. For years my family have baffled new students by telling them not to fool around with the college widow.

"Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!" is the best Marx Bros. song, period.

My morbid curiosity got the better of me so I rented Epic Movie. And yeah, it's baby piss. Just constant "Hey, how about this movie, and how about this movie" stuff going on. (Plus, references to troubled celebrities and MTV shows) Apparently, just putting a rap song in the background kind of makes you funny. Also, their budget was so threadbare there aren't any creature battles per se, just people in generic warrior costumes. They also make Aslan a very cheap looking lion/human hybird, and I have to say, this is probably the most embarassing thing Fred Willard has done in his career.

It gets really bad when the movies it tries to parody are comedies, and since some of them aren't even funny, well, do the multiplication in your head. There's absolutely no reason to do a parody of Nacho Libre, which was already a slapstick comedy, and really wasn't a huge blip on the cultural radar. (It's even a problem when they poke fun at X-Men, where they do a sight gag about Wolverine's claws making a rude gesture. It was already done in the first movie, and much funnier) There's also some flash point reference to Talladega Nights. Why? I have no idea. (We also see a guy who looks kind of like Daniel Craig in a tux while the Bond signature plays. No reason at all) Also, Click is brought in as a dues ex machina, though at that point I didn't care because it's not like the plot was logical anyways, and because it led to something that was kind of mildy funny.

I have to admit, at times it was alarmingly faithful to what they were making fun of. For instance, the Jack Sparrow analog is surprisingly in-character, and just like the real Chronicles of Narnia, Susan isn't given a really substantial character arc at all. But if anyone has anything they were kind of wondering about this mosntrosity, but didn't want to risk flaying their mind for themselves, now's the time to ask.

I read a review which basically talked about how it didn't so much parody or make fun of the movies, as it just considered the act of referencing them as joke enough. It's the cinematic equivalent of an eight-year-old who's jokes are all, "Remember that other movie? That was so funny!"

You know, I could almost live with that if they had actually referenced epic movies. I mean, you get points for Narnia, and I'll even give you the POTC franchise, but the random comedies are just--how do you even parody comedies? How?

Not Another Teen Movie did it reasonably well, because of the common threads that the genre seems to have, (The slow clap, how foreign girls always seem to be horny for nerds). But making fun of slapstick with more slapstick just feels redundant and a blatant attempt to cash in on someone else's hard work. They take the Borat bit where we're introduced to his sister, word for word except they make her a fawn. And it's not like Borat is guilty of the same things Harry Potter or X-Men or Pirates of of the Carribean. One could parody Borat, and how it seeks to make fun of the bigoted and ignorant whle making money off them. (But then again, Epic Movie itself is just satisfied with the latter)

Tonight we watched Music and Lyrics. It was definitely a fuzzy movie and Hugh Grant somehow always manages to skew my critical thinking skills. Kristen Johnson was very funny. Her relationship with Drew Barrymore make me think of my little sister and I. (though my sister and I tend to start conversations with, "Hey Hoor")

I still really don't understand the thought process behind the "joke" of having Harry (and Hermione & Ron) being in their 40s but claiming to be teenagers. I mean, if the HP movies were 90210ing it with their actors, it'd make sense where they were coming from with it. It would still look horribly awful-- but that joke would make sense.

See, when you end up making fun of a string of movies for their genre conventions, I can see that. But Talladega Nights?

Not to mention, NOTM went with both classic and recent teen movies, and put it together in a relatively coherant narrative. Also you didn't have to be aware of the specific movies. If you hadn't seen, for example, Can't Hardly Wait, you wouldn't not get what was going on. The only thing the movies referenced in Epic Movie seem to have in common is they came out in the 18 months beforehand.

Is anyone else scared at how many people have seen Epic Movie? And are prepared to own up to it?

I saw Starter for Ten which came and went in about 3 days here. Charming (especially if you were a student in the mid 1980s, ahem). James McAvoy did look like a 19 year old and it was funny to see two of the History Boys play rather less intellectual teenagers. Plus nekkid Charles Dance.

I saw Starter for Ten on the airplane coming back from England at Christmas. I absolutely loved that. It was so sweet and funny.

I've been wanting to see that. If only because in the last year I've developed things for both James McAvoy and Dominic Cooper. Its not out in Canada yet though, and it only was at the Globe for a couple of days.