Alyson Hannigan

’Date Movie’ offers many parodies, few laughs

"Date Movie" replaces the horror genre with romantic comedy, but otherwise attracts the same lowbrow audience that the "Scary Movie" films did.

The weak story is nothing more then a simple pretense to move the characters from one parody sequence to the next. Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan) plays a surprisingly mobile 390-pound restaurant waitress looking for her prince charming. She visits a midget who brings her to a garage-based plastic surgeon team to "pimp her out." Julia soon snares her true love, Grant. The rest of the movie revolves around a plot by Grant’s ex-fiancee to break up their wedding.

The film takes the low road when it comes to spoof movies. The point seems to be cramming as many movie references as possible without worrying about whether or not it’s actually funny. Why in the world is a "Kill Bill" reference appropriate in a movie parodying romantic comedies?

It used to be that spoof movies were an intelligently thought-out homage to the films they parodied. "Spaceballs" is considered a classic today because of its subtle humor and pop culture references. Anyone who has seen an "Austin Powers" movie knows the director must have had a genuine love of the spy genre. "Date Movie," on the other hand, feels as if directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer saw a few movie trailers and thought their respective films should be included in the messy collage of movie references.

The few times the movie is funny is the result of the directors hunting for laughs with bird shot. So many bullets are being sprayed that the occasional pellet is bound to hit its target.

Much like with quail hunting, older audiences should probably stay away from "Date Movie." The humor is often outright disgusting and so juvenile that even the kind of person who still finds fart jokes funny won’t find much humor here.

By advertising that "Date Movie" was from two of the six writers of "Scary Movie," perhaps the marketing department was hoping to trick audiences into thinking the film would be only one-third as terrible as its predecessor. Unfortunately, "Date Movie" is every bit as bad as its spoof movie cousins. Sequels are a big thing in the movie industry right now, but this is one film series that Hollywood will hopefully decline a second date with.