Alyson Hannigan

Jennifer Lopez starred in the movie "The Wedding Planner." Jennifer Lopez occasionally has trouble hiding her Latina accent. And Jennifer Lopez, who also goes by the nickname "J. Lo," has a somewhat disproportionate bottom.

Thus, there is a joke in "Date Movie" where the winsome Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan) and her new fiance Grant Fockyerdoder (Adam Campbell) visit a wedding planner named Jello, who has, like, a butt so big she knocks things over with it when she turns around.

If you are screaming with laughter at this very simple joke, you might need some sort of medication. Or you might be the ideal audience for "Date Movie," a stupendously unfunny satire of the modern rom-com, where everything from "When Harry Met Sally ..." and Pretty Woman" to "My Best Friend’s Wedding" and "Meet the Parents" is thrown into a blender and regurgitated for our alleged amusement, along with anything else the filmmakers could steal from popular culture.

Julia, for instance, is introduced as a morbidly obese ("Shallow Hal"), mopey journal-keeper ("Bridget Jones’s Diary") who’s stuck working in her parents’ Greek restaurant ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding"). But then she meets Grant, a floppy-haired and somewhat stuffy Englishman who’d be her dream guy ... except for his stunningly hot ex, who seems bent on derailing their perfect romance.

Actually, calling "Date Movie" a satire is misrepresenting its purpose. Satire implies the application some sense of wit or comic perspective. "Date Movie" is written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer; Seltzer also directed. These are two of the writers of "Scary Movie," and apparently they’re the ones whose idea of comedy consisted of lifting jokes, and in some cases entire scenes, from various successful films without any comment or embellishment.

But that’s not satire — or even spoofing, really. All it does is remind us that the original movies were funnier and more inspired — or at least, tried to be — than the stiff imitation on the screen.

Fox is bringing "Date Movie" to DVD in two different editions: The PG-13 theatrical cut gets a flippable special edition, with full-frame and enhanced-widescreen transfers and a bevy of extras, while the unrated director’s cut offers two minutes’ worth of footage, exclusively in enhanced widescreen, along with a few more supplements.

Bonus material common to both editions includes five deleted scenes; an optional laugh track to be played underneath the feature (because that’s what was missing in the theater); "On Dating", which assembles cast quips from the press junket; a collection of trailers, TV spots and internet clips; a pair of "romantic screensavers," which the rest of us call "background plates," and "The Quickie," which delivers the "Date Movie" experience in about six and a half minutes - not by speeding up the film, but by chopping it down to the small handful of sight gags and jokes that people might remember.

The unrated disc adds seven additional deleted scenes; a creepy set-top game called "Andy’s Cherry Stem Surprise;" a series of spoof making-ofs produced for the Fox Movie Channel that mock Peter Jackson’s "King Kong" production diaries; "Fun with Casting," a two-minute collection of audition footage, and a gag reel.

Both discs also offer the same trio of audio commentaries — a filmmakers’ track with Friedberg and Seltzer, a cast track featuring Hannigan, Campbell and co-stars Sophie Monk, Valery Ortiz and Tony Cox, and what’s billed as an "anti-commentary" with film critics Scott Foundas of LA Weekly and Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News. Couldn’t happen to a better movie. Really, it couldn’t.

STUDIO: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

RELEASE DATE: May 30, 2006

RATING: PG-13/Unrated

PRICE: $29.95

TIME: 83 minutes (PG-13) / 85 minutes (unrated)

DVD EXTRAS: French and Spanish audio dubs; English and Spanish subtitles; audio commentaries; deleted scenes; production featurettes; marketing gallery; "screen savers". Unrated edition includes additional deleted scenes, featurettes and an interactive game.