Genre parody has, to a degree, become a cinematic genre unto itself and, on numerous occasions, has been carried off brilliantly, with hilarious results. Going back to early Woody Allen, through the Airplane and Police Squad series, on through the Wayans' myriad takes on horror, Christopher Guest's mock-docs, Walk Hard's spot-on lampoon of the bio-pic, and the silly, but laugh-riot sports-drama send-up, The Comebacks.
That brings me to one of the worst movies I've ever seen, They Came Together, which attempts to skew the most formulaic of all movie formulas, the rom-com. It takes real genius to make a successful movie crammed with dumb puns, hackneyed plot points, and cliché characters. And, one would think that casting Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler as the hate-you-then-love-you ad nauseam love interests would be the perfect place to start.
How do you assemble an ensemble this strong and end up with such a horrible film? The root of the problem lies in a very unfunny, seldom surprising script that never really commits itself to true parody. It's almost as though the writers set out to pen a legit rom-com, then realized that it was so bad, the only chance the script had at reaching the screen was to start making fun of their own lame stab at the genre.
David Wain's direction is even less committed than are the words on the page. Poor Amy Poehler mugs from scene to scene, as if she was constantly trying to remind the director what kind of movie they were making. Or, maybe she was trying to tell the audience that she was fully aware what a stinky pile of doo-doo she'd gotten herself into. Rudd was far more animated in I Love You Man and his other Wain collaboration, Role Models, than this rudderless waste of talent.
Red Box! I demand my buck-twenty back!
That brings me to one of the worst movies I've ever seen, They Came Together, which attempts to skew the most formulaic of all movie formulas, the rom-com. It takes real genius to make a successful movie crammed with dumb puns, hackneyed plot points, and cliché characters. And, one would think that casting Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler as the hate-you-then-love-you ad nauseam love interests would be the perfect place to start.
How do you assemble an ensemble this strong and end up with such a horrible film? The root of the problem lies in a very unfunny, seldom surprising script that never really commits itself to true parody. It's almost as though the writers set out to pen a legit rom-com, then realized that it was so bad, the only chance the script had at reaching the screen was to start making fun of their own lame stab at the genre.
David Wain's direction is even less committed than are the words on the page. Poor Amy Poehler mugs from scene to scene, as if she was constantly trying to remind the director what kind of movie they were making. Or, maybe she was trying to tell the audience that she was fully aware what a stinky pile of doo-doo she'd gotten herself into. Rudd was far more animated in I Love You Man and his other Wain collaboration, Role Models, than this rudderless waste of talent.
Red Box! I demand my buck-twenty back!