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There are many different types of comedy
from refined wit to slapstick, stand-up to parody and spoof. The use of parody
has been with us a long time and some of more notable examples are films such as
Airplane, Naked Weapon and the Scream series. What the Scream series did for
horror, Disaster Movie attempts to do for the disaster genre with mixed
results.
Disaster films have always been popular
from early 70’s classics such as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon
Adventure to Armageddon, The Day after Tomorrow and the Core. The sheer
diversity of these films are incredible, from floods to volcanoes, man-made
disasters to comets, fire and tornadoes to germ warfare and beyond.
Disaster Film uses the framework of the
traditional disaster film to create a parody based plot mixed with a fast paced
send-up of every possible recent film and celebrity.
Will has a strange dream in which he has
been in the reality TV show Gladiator and somehow bumps into Amy Winehouse, she
gives him a prophecy about the end of the world and some mumbo jumbo about a
crystal skull after a series of very long burps. Will is rather young at heart
and while in his twenties is holding a teen sixteen party since he never had
one when he was younger, he also has lots of commitment issues. As the party
reaches full swing, disaster hits and they must try and escape the city to save
themselves. Disaster occurs on disaster from earthquakes to comets, a freezing
wind to a Tornado. The city is decimated and everyone is escaping even down to
the last superhero.
As they are heading out of the city, Will
receives a phone call from his girlfriend Amy who is pinned to the floor by a
fallen statue in the Museum of Natural History. He decides, against all odds,
to return to save his girlfriend and along the way return the crystal skull to
its pedestal at the Museum. It seems that its removal has caused all these
disasters to occur and unless it can be returned by 9 o’clock the world will end.
While this is the arc of the plot, the
movie is filled to the brim with every possible movie parody from High School
Musical to Batman, Hellboy to Iron Man, Beowulf to Sex and the City. You could
spend way too long noting all the movies references as it not only parodies
scenes from movies but characters as well from Kung Fu Panda to Iron Man,
Hancock to The Hulk. Along the way we are also treated to caricatures of major
celebrities from Michael Jackson to Amy Winehouse.
Some parodies are used more extensively
than others, the spoof of High School Musical is amusing offering sexually
charged musical numbers which ridicule the squeaky clean “Disney” approach of
the original film. There are lots of in-jokes, dirty references and toilet
humor as well as deliberate gender parodies using drag, gay jokes and so on,
the naked Beowulf certainly gets a serve.
While it is very fast paced and certainly
enjoyable, it drags in places and does seem too much like a long drawn out
comedy skit. It will also date very quickly, unless you know all the films,
musicians and characters being referenced, it will fall pretty flat. While it
is certainly a damn good laugh and there are some real flashes of comedic
brilliance, these are few and far between. I enjoyed it and as an one-off burst
of comedic madness it lightened my night, but I certainly wouldn’t want to
watch such films on a regular basis, even coming in at 90 minutes I found my
“boredom” warning light going off quite a few times. There was just too much of
the same type of humor and the same types of jokes over and over again. There
are only so many films you can send-up before it all becomes much the same.
The DVD also includes loads of extras
including a commentary, featurettes and various sing-a-long songs. The “I’m
F**king Matt Damon Sing-a-long” is extremely funny, taking the song from the
movie and moving the crassness of the humor up a few notches.
This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2
(2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.
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