Movie 43 (15)

The definition of "comedy", for those of you who are unsure or unaware, is the following:
"Professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh; A movie, play or broadcast intended to make an audience laugh".

The word "intended" is key for the directors and producers of the "comedy" Movie 43 - because it could be argued in court, should you want to sue them under the Trades Description Act, that they had MEANT to make audiences laugh.

The fact they failed miserably is more down to incompetence than negligence.

You see, the idea should have been a simple one - take a collection of Hollywood's biggest and brightest (plus Johnny Knoxville, Gerard Butler and Seann William Scott), put them in a variety of sketches, link them with an amusing tale of teenage pranking and watch the money roll in.

They just forgot a few things.

The jokes.

Of course, you might find something that tickles you here. Enough areas of comedy are covered - paedophilic incest, pooping on your beloved, testicles hanging off Hugh Jackman's chin, it's all standard fare. It was frankly amazing that no one was laughing.

And it's not even that the subjects they go at are tasteless - that's kind of the point of the film. The crime here is that it's NOT FUNNY.

And it could be. In places. There are smatterings of good ideas strewn across the 90 minutes, just nothing to warrant making a whole movie.

And the "twist" at the end (oh yes, there's a twist) comes, literally, with a full fanfare, flags and a marching band. If you don't guess it the minute the young lad flips open the laptop, you've failed. You can never watch films again.

Mind you, after this you may not want to.


(Normally the trailer would go in here, but I can't do it to you)

You never go into a film looking to slag it off, whatever the reservations (and the trailer gives you many) you hope against hope there's something you can enjoy. A chuckle would do, you know, let's not be greedy.

Hollywood can continue thinking that young spotty herberts with camcorders is what's damaging box office receipts, but it's not.
It's allowing unmitigated garbage like this to actually make it into the world's cinemas.