Review of Date Movie (2006) by Patrickm. — 25 Apr 2006

This is an astoundingly bad movie. It's almost on a Nothing But Trouble-level. It is a film that seems to want to punish the audience for existing. I teach high school students a film course in comedy, and invariably there will be a contingent who complain about having to watch -- egads -- black-and-white movies or, worse, silent films.

This operates on the mistaken assumption that sound + color = funny. It's the right of the uneducated to -- up to a certain point -- hold this blanket, underinformed preconception. I can only pray that Date Movie is the antidote.

Here is a movie that is wall-to-wall body fluid/function jokes (in color and sound, no less) and there's not a laugh to be found. This is in opposition to Not Another Teen Movie or the tv show Reno: 911, which rely on all manner of fluid/function jokes and bother to make them funny.

Maybe I can thank the makers of Date Movie for giving me a film that pretty much every one can point to and say, "See that so-called 'comedy' movie? The one called Date Movie? Yeah, that one.

Not funny!" Perhaps we can show this film to anti-American terrorists, assuring them that we, too, find it horrendously unfunny. There IS common ground. Who knows? Maybe the makers of Date Movie will be awarded a Nobel for uniting the world against this one thing.

This is a film that even the stellar cuteness of Alyson Hannigan, the endless charm of Fred Willard, and the inventive verve of Jennifer Coolidge can't save.