1412. Epic Movie (2007)

Starring: Jayma Mays, Adam Campbell, Jennifer Coolidge

Director: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Running Time: 85 mins

Epic Movie is an American film about four orphans from around the world who win the chance to have an epic adventure. After touring a bizarre chocolate factory, they travel through a wardrobe to the magical land of Gnarnia, where they soon realise they must fight for their survival.

This isn’t the worst of the parody ‘Movies’ that I’ve seen. Of course, that’s no real compliment given that they’re all awful, but there were a few moments in Epic Movie that weren’t so terrible. That said, the film is still awful, and is full of jokes that land miles away from where they’re meant to, dull parodies of a series of very average films, and no real story to save you from the boredom of getting through the multitude of failed comedy.

However, before I get into why this film is so inevitably terrible, I want to touch on the few bright moments that made it ever so slightly more bearable than I expected. Mainly, the lead performances are okay. They’re by no means particularly funny, but starring actors that have made numerous appearances in other films of this series, they were at least bearable to watch, and some of their line delivery helped to make some of the awful jokes a little better.

Beyond that, though, there’s once again not much to praise about this movie. Normally, a parody movie should disguise its use of another’s story and premise with clever humour that turns it into a completely different film (eg: Austin Powers, Airplane! etc.). Unfortunately, Epic Movie quite literally rips off as much as it can from big blockbusters like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, The Chronicles of Narnia, X-Men, Harry Potter and Pirates of The Caribbean, and doesn’t try in any way to bring a different perspective to it.

Inserting slightly different ‘wacky’ character names such as Aslo, Gnarnia and Captain Jack Swallows definitely isn’t enough to warrant a good laugh for a whole feature film, whilst the film’s various attempts at creating its own humour and running jokes are frankly embarrassing, featuring jokes that crop up time and time again throughout the film with no meaning, and the eventual pay-off late on is completely unsatisfying.

Again, I wasn’t as infuriated by Epic Movie as some of the others in this franchise, largely because it didn’t actually try as hard with its own typically disgusting brand of comedy, but that’s no reason to suggest it’s a good film. A couple of good moments in the lead performances are overshadowed by 85 minutes of boredom in the story, and barely even one joke that made me chuckle, and that’s why Epic Movie gets a 2.7 from me.