Date Movie film review

certificate_12A

DATE MOVIE

This spoof on romantic comedies is co-written and directed by Aaron Seltzer, who along with writing partner Jason Friedberg, is responsible for the Scary Movie films and guess what? It's frightening. Frighteningly bad. Taking good jokes from a vast selection of comedies and then making bad ones from them renders Date Movie an exercise in redundancy.

Stealing... sorry, taking inspiration from such films as Hitch, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Meet The Fockers and Bridget Jones's Diary, along with less uproarious material like King Kong and Lord Of The Rings, Date Movie lurches from one familiar setting to the next, hanging around only long enough for us to wish we were instead seeing the very film it was woefully satirizing.

The tone is set from the outset when the obese Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan) mourns her loveless life as a waitress in her father Frank's (Eddie Griffin) Greek restaurant. It's a tone that embraces bad taste at every opportunity. Once the extensive repertoire of fat jokes has been suitably exhausted, Julia, under guidance from the diminutive date doctor Hitch (Tony Cox), sheds her excessive weight to reveal surprise surpise, a svelte and beautiful person underneath. Her ambition to find a husband is closer to being realized when she meets the foppish Brit Grant Funkyerdoder (Adam Campbell) who possesses not only a ludicrous name, over sexed parents (Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge) but a conspicuous dearth of personality.

On the way to the inevitable climactic wedding scene, the tiresome journey is lightened only by endeavouring to recognize what films have been plundered. Grant does Meg Ryan's orgasm schtick from When Harry Met Sally and John Cusack's ghettoblaster moment from Say Anything. Other inclusions, like a Thriller-era Michael Jackson having his head smashed in a dumpster, are more puzzling. The running gag of hummous being used as a universal balm was but a rare example of originality. During the long lull between jokes, Sophie Monk serves her intended purpose of providing an alluring distraction as Grant's ex Andy.

This is one Date Movie where even the back row isn't far enough away.

Kevin Murphy