I wrote this for my blog, and thought I would share it here and maybe get some feedback and opinions. It's not a review of Disaster Movie because I have not seen it, moreover it's a musing on if we'll ever see the last of this crap, and how we might speed up the process of getting rid of it for good.
Blog Entry
"Title aside, Disaster Movie may be the first Airplane!-style parody that has no overriding concept beyond...skewering a bunch of recent hit films. It should have been called I Love the First Half of 2008. Since many of the targets (Cloverfield, Hancock, Kung Fu Panda) already have a cheeky self-consciousness, the comedy rarely seems more than a hasty patchwork of cheap-shot allusions. But a few arrows hit their marks. The movie is merciless sending up Juno's self-satisfied hipster gobbledygook, and it's quite funny to see Hannah Montana still promoting her tie-in products as she lies crushed and dying under a meteor. (Ratin: C+)"
- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman is responsible for the most positive review Disaster Movie has received thus far, and it still registers as a rotten failure. I?m not going to write about the quality of the movie, or who the movie appeals to, or muse about the repercussions this film will have on western culture. Partly because you probably don?t need me to tell you that it?s a pile of shit, but mostly because I have not seen it, and probably never will. What interests me more is the financial performance of this film, and the possibility that maybe the entire world has had enough of this.
People often wonder aloud why Hollywood keeps on churning out crap like the ?genre movie? series when there are thousands of other half baked ideas more worthy to be put to celluloid. My answer is simple, and exceptionally easy to come up with: Hollywood is in the business of making money, not art or great movies.
While the occasional great big budget film like The Dark Knight, Titanic, or even the Harry Potter series, manages to rake in hundreds of millions, it doesn?t change the fact that those films are very expensive to create and market, and there?s a long profit gestation period. You have a better chance of exponential earnings when you bank on cheapo low budget films that might spark a revolution, and even if they do tank, losses are minimum. Mad Max (1979 Australian film starring Mel Gibson) had the highest profit-to-cost ratio for twenty years until The Blair Witch Project in 1999. Mad Max was also cheap, an international success, and totally fucking awesome.
Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet the Spartans, all follow that same vain in that they?re incredibly cheap, wasting no money on gimmicks like big name stars, special effects, or even passable costumes and makeup. Those four movies all had a budget of between $20 million to $35 million, and made back a good chunk of that, if not all of it, on the first weekend when they all opened in the top spot.
Now we have Disaster Movie, proudly following in the tradition of ham handedly assembled low budget spletch, except this time nobody cares. It opened in seventh place with less than seven million dollars to show for it, almost guaranteeing that it?ll quietly slink away in the night. It?s not like Disaster Movie had any real competition this week either. Tropic Thunder is still number one, and that came out three weeks ago. Even Babylon A.D, a film that the director verbally assaulted and disparaged before the critics even got a chance, fared better on the weekend annually known as ?nothing good is coming out.?
Could it really be that we?ve seen the last of these movies when rumour has it that ?Spy Movie? is just around the corner? Since these films are no longer either passable or profitable, we might just be out of the woods.
End of Blog entry
In summary, while the well of crude humour and fart jokes can go on forever, the amount of money to be made from the particular brand of humour offered in the 'genre Movie' is apparently drying up. What do you think?
Blog Entry
"Title aside, Disaster Movie may be the first Airplane!-style parody that has no overriding concept beyond...skewering a bunch of recent hit films. It should have been called I Love the First Half of 2008. Since many of the targets (Cloverfield, Hancock, Kung Fu Panda) already have a cheeky self-consciousness, the comedy rarely seems more than a hasty patchwork of cheap-shot allusions. But a few arrows hit their marks. The movie is merciless sending up Juno's self-satisfied hipster gobbledygook, and it's quite funny to see Hannah Montana still promoting her tie-in products as she lies crushed and dying under a meteor. (Ratin: C+)"
- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman is responsible for the most positive review Disaster Movie has received thus far, and it still registers as a rotten failure. I?m not going to write about the quality of the movie, or who the movie appeals to, or muse about the repercussions this film will have on western culture. Partly because you probably don?t need me to tell you that it?s a pile of shit, but mostly because I have not seen it, and probably never will. What interests me more is the financial performance of this film, and the possibility that maybe the entire world has had enough of this.
People often wonder aloud why Hollywood keeps on churning out crap like the ?genre movie? series when there are thousands of other half baked ideas more worthy to be put to celluloid. My answer is simple, and exceptionally easy to come up with: Hollywood is in the business of making money, not art or great movies.
While the occasional great big budget film like The Dark Knight, Titanic, or even the Harry Potter series, manages to rake in hundreds of millions, it doesn?t change the fact that those films are very expensive to create and market, and there?s a long profit gestation period. You have a better chance of exponential earnings when you bank on cheapo low budget films that might spark a revolution, and even if they do tank, losses are minimum. Mad Max (1979 Australian film starring Mel Gibson) had the highest profit-to-cost ratio for twenty years until The Blair Witch Project in 1999. Mad Max was also cheap, an international success, and totally fucking awesome.
Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet the Spartans, all follow that same vain in that they?re incredibly cheap, wasting no money on gimmicks like big name stars, special effects, or even passable costumes and makeup. Those four movies all had a budget of between $20 million to $35 million, and made back a good chunk of that, if not all of it, on the first weekend when they all opened in the top spot.
Now we have Disaster Movie, proudly following in the tradition of ham handedly assembled low budget spletch, except this time nobody cares. It opened in seventh place with less than seven million dollars to show for it, almost guaranteeing that it?ll quietly slink away in the night. It?s not like Disaster Movie had any real competition this week either. Tropic Thunder is still number one, and that came out three weeks ago. Even Babylon A.D, a film that the director verbally assaulted and disparaged before the critics even got a chance, fared better on the weekend annually known as ?nothing good is coming out.?
Could it really be that we?ve seen the last of these movies when rumour has it that ?Spy Movie? is just around the corner? Since these films are no longer either passable or profitable, we might just be out of the woods.
End of Blog entry
In summary, while the well of crude humour and fart jokes can go on forever, the amount of money to be made from the particular brand of humour offered in the 'genre Movie' is apparently drying up. What do you think?
