Misleading Trailers! Bad Directing, characters lacked authenticity!

Rating: 3/10 (6 October 2013)

They definitely tried to make a good film and I'm sure this was a fun movie to make, but it unfortunately fails. Bummed I was looking forward to this movie! The only reason why I give this a 3 instead of a 1 is Danny McBride's performance. It's one of those movies where you know it sucks early on and there's nothing it could do to redeem itself. If there was a way to calculate how many people walked out of the theater, I have little doubt this would hold the all-time record. It's because of the style, which I would imagine lays blame mostly on the directors.
I liked the trailers, because it made the movie seem as though it was going to have that element of authenticity/realism with the characters, while being a far-fetched comedy, but the character style is beyond over the top stupid. Here's a thought, why not just make the movie the way you want to present the movie in the trailer? If it wasn't for the trailer I would have thought that they intended to make what they ended up with. A stupid comedy can work if it has an element of authenticity in the characters a decent portion of the time. This movie starts off like it could be that way, but early on the characters just... oy vey!!! Which BTW, has nothing to do with the story transitioning into craziness, but that's about the time when the characters turn over the top stupid. The whole, "playing themselves", was totally for marketing this movie (technically they used their real names). Even if the actors played over the top far-fetched versions of themselves this movie probably would have been good.
It's generally true that comedy works when you have that certain element of authenticity in the characters (to varying degrees). With the exception of Airplane, Naked Gun and Spaceballs, which has the intentions to be stupid on stupid throughout, although those worked, generally they don't, like this movie. This may seem like random movie drops, but it's a rip on the degree of the stupid on stupid nature of this movie, being that it's much more comparable to those then it is to a movie like Superbad. I loved the movie Superbad, because the characters had that believability. On the other hand if you liked Pineapple Express (which I hated, for the same reasons), you may like this movie, although several reviewers said they liked PExpress and hated this movie). Just to pull another unrelated random comedy out of my butthole; Dumb & Dumber (which I consider a classic) is a movie one may think would fall into my stupid on stupid category, but Lloyd and Harry had a fairly realistic world interacting and operating around them, which was part of the reason their over the top antics had credibility. Nothing against "This Is the Ends" crazy world, but they had a lot more flexibility with their characters to achieve such credibility.
There were a handful of scenes that still made me laugh. All of them involved Danny McBride (had no opinion prior, other than two dreadful movies I saw him in, PExpress & Hot Rod). Just about every scene Danny had, he at least did something that gave it a chuckle. Going back to the whole realism thing, Danny has that authenticity/believability (while different, his ability to be believable when being surrounded by and doing far-fetched things reminds me of Zach Galifianakis), which makes his scenes in the movie funny that few others with the same lines could pull off. This dude has talent; he needs to be cast in some leading or significant supporting roles. If McBride's stock isn't soaring yet, I definitely want to buy some.
Spoilers Scene - everyone wakes up and they give Danny the spiel about all the crazy things that happened. He then proceeds to give this logical breakdown that they were tripping on Acid and goes down the list of people based on their appearance. Hilarious! It actually made me question it, until the head falls off. Scene - the sticky magazine scene. Danny should win some type of academy award for that scene. Seriously! Franco also does a good job. There's one point where Seth Rogan is busting up, so they cut to a back shot and you can totally tell he's laughing. The Pilgrim line particularly cracked me up. Scene – A subtle line, but it caused me to laugh the hardest. The part after Danny drinks the water, Grabs Franco's gun and puts it in his mouth, takes it out and pushes Franco's arm down, "That's what I thought nerd." It's not funny in writing, but it's my favorite part in practice. Scene – I went back through and virtually every scene with McBride, he does something that's at least subtly funny. The whole Emma Watson incidental rape discussion scene is funny on paper, which turned out semi funny in practice, but it's Danny's sincerity throughout that makes it funny. Then up in the interview room when he says, Herminey took are crap (it's the way he says it) good stuff! There are a couple other scenes as well.
I like virtually every actor that's in this movie in general. Jonah Hill is one of my favorite actors (his role in this sucked). I don't understand why directors don't get it. Perhaps they strive for character authenticity and they turn out stupid, or maybe it's something that's difficult to achieve (I don't know I'm not a director)? I really hope it's not by choice. Sure there are people out there that like stupid on stupid, but there are far more people out there that like some element of realism in the characters with their stupid and you won't even lose the stupid on stupid crowd as a fan base, so in the end it seems like a win win.