Review: "Epic Movie" is Epically Bad

You know almost right away how bad "Epic Movie" is going to be. If you've seen the previews (if you haven't you either don't own a television or are unconscious) you know that the film parodies literally a dozen movies from the last year or so. For whatever reason, the writer/director team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer choose to lay the framework for their spoof based on the hit film "The Chronicles of Narnia," which may have been a big hit but was not exactly ripe for spoofing. The makers of "Scary Movie 4" at least got the premise right by spoofing the underwhelming Tom Cruise/Steven Spielberg hit "War of the Worlds." They failed miserably but at least they choose a good target.

Perhaps it didn't matter which movie they used for the foundation of the film. The makers end up going after every major summer movie you can think of from "The DaVinci Code" to "Snakes on a Plane" to "Lady In The Water" to "Pirates 2" and on and on. The problem is that the jokes are all too obvious and not very funny. Friedberg and Seltzer (who created last year's worst movie, "Date Movie") have a particular fondness for potty humor ad nauseum. It's not enough to have a flatulence joke once or twice but they ram it down our throats until even the kindest audience member is likely to shake their heads.