Product: Date Movie [UMD for PSP] (2006)
Rating: 4.0
A very good, ridiculously maligned film
From the folks who brought us Spy Hard (1996) and the Scary Movie horror spoof series (the first arrived in 2000), Date Movie is a spoof of modern romantic comedies. The flow of comedy material is similar to the Scary Movies. Roughly, from scene to scene, different films are spoofed, with a couple overarching spoofs acting as the vehicles, and the style of humor has an emphasis on absurdism and pushing-the-boundaries outrageousness. So if you've seen any of the Scary Movies, you should know what to expect here, and if you've enjoyed them and you have some familiarity with romantic comedies, you should enjoy this film also.I've seen the first three Scary Movies so far and I've loved all three. I also enjoyed Date Movie a lot. Anyone who knows me knows I love absurdist humor (well, and absurdist seriousness, too). I also like most of the cast here, and I've seen most of the rom-coms that serve as spoof material. You wouldn't need to be familiar with source material to find this funny, but I think it helps. I laughed aloud during most scenes, and I don't think my face was absent a smile very often. The spoofs are threaded together in a way that makes an amusing, crazy, rom-com like story. You could even find more intellectual themes and subtexts here, but that would be missing the point by a large margin. As Jerry Lewis once said on "The Dick Cavett Show", "Sometimes a fat lady joke is just a fat lady joke".What's perplexing to me is noting that as of this writing, Date Movie has a 2.7 average from 9,715 votes on IMDb and is currently number 67 on the Bottom 100 list. I can only guess that such a negative overall assessment will probably relax in the future, but what the heck are the complaints about the film? Are a lot of people really heading into a film like Date Movie not knowing what kind of humor to expect? Let me head off to some of the reviews to see what's going on . . .. . . Alright, I'm back. Well, the majority of negative criticism seems to fall under a couple categories. First, a few comments are complaining that the humor is "crude", "disgusting", etc. Similarly, some people seem to not care much for absurdist humor. It's fine to have those different tastes, but if those folks know that, why would they watch Date Movie (and especially pay for it at the theater or on DVD?) I guess those folks didn't know what to expect. They must have never seen one of the Scary Movies, or they're not aware enough to have realized that Date Movie would have the same kind of humor; there's hardly anything here that's more risqué or crazy than in the Scary Movies.For the second group of negative critics, a couple people seem to not have been able to follow the film. Also, a number of people seem to have been trying to read "Date Movie" as a legitimate rom-com rather than as a spoof of rom-coms. A couple people don't seem to understand the idea of a spoof very well. It's probably best if I refrain from commenting on these situations, as I wouldn't be able to say anything very pleasant about those folks' intellectual capabilities.The bottom line, like always, is to be familiar with your own tastes. Know what you tend to like and why. Then all you have to do is garner a couple basic facts about a film (such as its genre, who produced, wrote and directed it, etc., maybe a brief account of the premise, and so on), and you should be able to make an intelligent decision about what to watch so that you don't waste your time and money. Too many people seemed to have watched and reviewed Date Movie who weren't good candidates for the film. Of course, there were also some well written, well though-out reviews from people who disliked Date Movie and who were good candidates for it, but those are few and far between.As for me, I loved it, but I subtracted one point for the fact that it peters out in the end a bit. It doesn't help that this is a short film and feels it (the unrated version is only 85 minutes including about 10 minutes of credits). But otherwise, Date Movie is excellent for people who like this type of film.