By ALEX PECHA
There’s a lot to be said about Movie 43: but if I had to choose one phrase to describe my experience with the movie it would have to be “Oh boy” in a very exasperated tone as if I had just found out I’m expected to run a 5K in an hour. Needless to say my experience with the movie was not exactly the best you could have with a movie. Let’s dive into it.
Movie 43 was a rather one note comedy movie that came out in January of 2013 (And movies that hit Netflix less than a year after they’re released are always utter masterpieces) that had an oddly all-star cast including A-listers such as Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Uma Thurman and way to many actually good actors. The movie also managed to become profitable, most likely due to its cast and not a whole lot else.
The over-arching plot of the movie is a down on his luck screenwriter (Dennis Quaid) trying to pitch an “artsy” movie to a prominent movie studio. How this actually plays out though is a bunch of small sketches, almost like a really long episode of SNL or MadTV. As is the problem with sketch shows you can never really know whether what you’re going to get is any good or not depending on the episode, that rule certainly applies to this movie in a bad way.
In case you hadn’t guessed by now this movie was not a good one. It had its funny moments to be sure, but for the most part the movie was just…awkward. The movie is best described as simply awkward, and terrible. Awkward and terrible. I think the movie sealed its fate with the first “sketch” which depicted Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman on a date, the joke? Hugh Jackman’s chin was actually a pair of testicles….that’s the entire joke. Hugh Jackman’s chin as testicles, my utter disappointment with cinema and Hugh Jackman can simply not be expressed in simple worlds; perhaps a guttural scream with some tears but certainly not words.
The movie kept up with the awkward and poor humor for the most part, though it did have some chuckle worthy moments including Robin (As in Batman and Robin) using a speed dating service. I also got a laugh out of a sketch featuring Chloe Mortez and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, not because the sketch itself was funny; but due to me remembering them actually doing a good job in the Kickass movies.
The movie is just an open insult to movie viewers, exasperated by just how many actual A-listers they somehow got to sign up for this. It’s almost amazing, how did all these well-known actors think this was actual good script to sign up for? It boggles the mind. The few chuckles in over an hour of movie do not excuse the utter insult the movie makers call comedy; this is ignoring the actually offensive things in the movie that I will not get into right now.
I can’t even say the actors were good; the writing was so horrid that even if the actors had pulled all the stops it wouldn’t make up for it. I can point out the actually horrible performance of the movie though, Dennis Quaid. Oh boy Dennis Quaid what happened? I can confidently say that Quaid is a good actor but I really have no idea what he was thinking with this movie. Quaid playing a desperate and strained screenwriter was both unfunny and not at all compelling, he did a better job in The Day After Tomorrow; and that’s saying quite a lot.
At the end of the day when all I said and done Movie 43 is just a bad, bad, awful, terrible insulting movie. I’m actually having trouble forgiving Netflix for actually thinking I’d want to watch it, especially when it normally has such a good sense about these things. The writing is awful; the comedy is awkward at best and insulting at worst, and the acting was alright but even if it was good it wouldn’t matter thanks to the previously stated terrible writing.
In short if you want to see a comedy movie skip out on this one, actually, scratch that. If there is a choice between watching this movie and taking a baseball bat to the face I would heartily suggest taking a few swings from the bat, at least that will give you an interesting story to tell.
