Review of Date Movie (2006) by Markb. — 27 Mar 2006

Is there anybody out there who DOESN'T love Alyson Hannigan [Ed- Easily my favoirte actress too]? I haven't seen any episodes of her prime time CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (perhaps if I spent less time going to films like Date Movie I'd have more of a chance to) but her portrayal of shy computer genius Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer made that character the heart of the show; late in the series when she unleashes her grief-fueled Wiccan rage on the whole world after her lover is senselessly murdered, most of us were more concerned for HER fate than we were for that of Planet Earth.

And Hannigan was nothing less than completely adorable and beguiling as the "band-camp girl" in the American Pie movie series, turning a potentially irritating character into a universally beloved one.

(Her prospective-father-in-law/ daughter-in-law chat in American Wedding was surprisingly sweet and heartfelt, especially given that so much of the conversation dealt with Jason Biggs' pubic hair!) These were Hannigan's triumphs as an actress, and so is Date Movie, a would-be spoof of the most popular romantic comedies of the last couple decades, in which Hannigan, as the heroine, never ever mugs, winks or pushes the jokes, or does anything other than play the situations for total emotional reality regardless of their obvious absurdity (even when she's wearing a fat suit).

This is the same approach Julie Hagerty took as the main stewardess in Airplane!, and it makes both actresses not only tremendously endearing but also very, very funny. Tony Cox, the little person with attitude who played Billy Bob Thornton's partner-in-crime in Bad Santa, brings us a twisted variant on Will Smith's matchmaker/ miracle worker in Hitch, and is a riot no matter what he does, and there are devastating, spot-on impersonations of Streisand and J.

Lo by Jennifer Coolidge and Valery M. Ortiz. What's truly amazing about all these performers is how consistently amusing they manage to be given that they have virtually no material whatsoever to work with; Date Movie's fatal flaw is not only its inability to improve on famous movie sequences that were already funny to begin with (how DO you improve on Meg Ryan's legendary restaurant scene in When Harry Met Sally.

.., anyway?) but most of the time it doesn't even seem to be trying: the writers endeavor to mock My Best Friend's Wedding's terrific restaurant sing-along bit but are too lazy and slovenly to get the meter of Burt Bacharach's and Hal David's "I Say A Little Prayer" right or even to provide rhyming words! In all fairness, there's one amusing (if obvious) take on the most famous sequence in Say Anything, but the huge majority of the time the filmmakers just take the easiest, most obvious way out, going for the grossest, most disgusting low blow possible; I saw this with a largely adolescent audience and the "EEEWWWW's" outnumbered the genuine laughs at least 100:1.

WKRP in Cincinnati creator Hugh Wilson, in rewriting the script for the first Police Academy movie, stated that he was certainly no prude, but a good solid joke is preferable to mindless tastelessness any day of the week.

The fact that I have to resort to using Police Academy as a "how-to" counterpoint to Date Movie's "how-NOT-to" approach to comedy is bad enough, but being in the position of praising Hannigan's great work and that of some of her co-stars while simultaneously telling everyone I know to run as far and fast in the opposite direction of the movie that showcases said work is far worse.