Review of Half Past Dead (2002) by Kevin D — 08 Jan 2011

A comedic masterpiece! This is one of the funniest movies of the 2000's. Hundreds of years from now scholars will study the humor from this movie. The movie is straight up amazing.

Get this: Steven Seagal plays a Russian born man that sounds American. He's best friends with a man that has no control of the ways in which his head tilts (Ja Rule). Ja Rule's character also has a problem with randomly winking at people. After a shootout sequence where seemingly nobody is shot and dozens of people fall off structures for no apparent reason, Ja Rule and Seagal end up in a state of the art prison. The place has doors that people from Star Trek would be jealous of.

Their fellow prisoners seem nice and they are categorized into 2 main groups: big white skinheads and minorities. It's about as cliched as it gets. After that, there are random slow motion scenes, random sequences of people jumping out of planes, a helicopter crash into a prison, "Steven Seagal" (aka his body double) fighting bad guys, and scenes where Ja Rule will basically flirt with anybody who will listen. All of this must be experienced first hand and the movie should be watched with a big group. The movie gets less funny in the last 20 minutes when the story is more concerned with the action, however there is a great sight gag during a skydiving sequence and an old joke is brought back right before the end of the movie. This is a hilarious comedy!

Okay, in all seriousness, this is an awful movie that can't be taken seriously. I honestly couldn't tell if the movie was really bad or if the movie intentionally fell under the "so bad it's good" category. Either way, the movie succeeded. You just have to know the movie will be bad if the director's name consists of 3 first names, Don Michael Paul. The movie is hysterical and should not be taken seriously. It should be appreciated for it's vintage use of unintentional comedy.