No Chick Flick
Date Movie Pokes Fun at Love

Movies about love and romance have prevailed for as long as Hollywood has been making films. While these stories are often dismissed as mere "chick flicks," they do fill a certain niche that keeps audiences coming back for more. The sheer number of these films has inspired Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer to make a spoof that parodies nearly every romantic comedy of the past 20 years. Unfortunately, the idea of "parody" is lost to crude humor, disgusting images, and stupid stereotypes.

Date Movie
Julia (Alyson Hannigan) and Grant (Adam Campbell) meet with a wedding planner (Valery M. Ortiz) to discuss their pending nuptials. (20th Century Fox, 2006)
Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Written by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Starring: Alyson Hannigan, Adam Campbell, Jennifer Coolidge, Eddie Griffin, and Fred Willard

Rated PG-13 (for continuous crude and sexual humor, including language)
Running time: 83 min.

FilmGuru's Rating : 2 out of 10.

The plot (if you can call it one) centers on Julia (Alyson Hannigan), an overweight girl who wants to find true love. With the help of a "date doctor" named Hitch (Tony Cox), she is remolded into a beautiful woman and finds Grant (Adam Campbell), the man of her dreams. While introducing Grant to her family and meeting his, Julia must also contend with Grant's old fiancee Andy (Sophie Monk) who is out to steal him back.

Along the way, the film finds plenty of romantic comedy fodder, including the infamous diner scene in When Harry Met Sally. The film also takes a few jabs at pop music stars, with some unflattering caricatures of Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jackson, and Britney Spears.

The humor, however, is crude at best. The film likes to go for the "gross out" whenever possible. There were at least a half-dozen times when I had to look away from the screen to keep from vomiting the popcorn and soda that I was eating. The last thing I need to see when I'm trying to enjoy a movie is Eddie Griffin choking on Fred Willard's chest hair.

Several of the films spoofed in Date Movie are not romantic comedies at all. I had to question why Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Star Wars, and the television series Pimp My Ride were used. Sure, they're in the collective consciousness of American moviegoers, but using them in a parody of chick flicks is nothing but a cheat. I guess they realized that the majority of their target market didn't actually see all those chick flicks that they are spoofing. So they had to fill in with gags about films that teen boys would have seen.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the movie was bad. But maybe my taste doesn't run to the mainstream. My wife and I were in a theater with only one other person and he was laughing like crazy. (Crazy being the optimal word, because he was also talking to himself throughout the movie.) Still, I can understand that some will find this movie funny. Personally, I thought the crazy guy behind us was much funnier.

When I read the movie poster that proclaimed that Date Movie was written by two of the six writers of Scary Movie, I thought it might be funny. I should have realized that (at best) it would be one-third as funny. After watching it, I think the folks who wrote Scary Movie could have done without these guys at all.