Movie 43 (2013)

Directed by Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Peter Farrelly, Will Graham, James Gunn & Brett Ratner. Starring Greg Kinnear, Dennis Quaid, Common, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Jeremy Allen White, Chris Pratt, Anna Faris, J. B. Smoove, Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Jack McBrayer, Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Bell, Uma Thurman, Bobby Cannavale, Jimmy Bennett, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Patrick Warburton, Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Gerard Butler, Stephen Merchant, Halle Berry, Terrence Howard, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel. [R]

In the tradition—I suppose—of freewheeling sketch comedy anthologies like The Kentucky Fried Movie and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, dozens of filmmakers and movie stars shot cheerfully offensive/raunchy/stoopid comedy shorts which tend to assume shock value equates laughter. Most of it doesn’t work, and when go-for-broke puerility lands with a scatological splat, it’s really unfunny, but a small number of goofy ideas and jokes do encourage chuckles. Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber as parents eager to give their home-schooled son the same painful and embarrassing experiences other teenagers deal with is humorous, and although it’s a one-joke concept (as most of them are), Terrence Howard’s increasingly annoyed line readings while trying to convince his all-black basketball team they’re about to crush their all-white rivals score a few glancing blows. Little else, however, from Kate Winslet being appalled by blind date Jackman’s “neck testicles” and the Dukes of Hazzard actors beating up a leprechaun with Gerard Butler’s face to a couple experimenting with coprophilia (if you don’t know, don’t look it up) and a Truth or Dare game gone too far, elicits even a smile. Despite a bevy of alternating writers, directors, and actors, a curious constant of thematic laziness runs through most of these bits (no less than three segments involve some variation of blind dating, and there’s no explanation whatsoever for the premise of the “iBabe”, an mp3-player shaped like a life-sized naked woman). If not for all that wasted talent, this rubbish could’ve easily gone ignored and forgotten like The Underground Comedy Movie (see, you forgot that existed, didn’t you?); instead it’s a bizarre blemish on a lot of IMDb career pages. Shot over the course of four years, arranged to fit into the busy schedules of so many well-known actors. An alternate version of the linking material appears in the UK release, and a couple of sketches were excised from the original cut, featuring actors such as Julianne Moore, Anton Yelchin, and Tony Shalhoub, plus direction from Bob Odenkirk.

25/100