Review of Movie 43 (2013) by Joey H — 30 Jan 2014

You know, with all the negative reviews, I was willing to give this film a chance. With all the negative press, I thought this film may have a chance. I'm no stranger to cringe comedy or even gross out humor. So I thought I might be the one to champion this film if I legitimately thought it had some funny moments. Sadly I was wrong. Very very wrong.

Now I will say that both sketch comedy and cringe humor can be very effective. The trick is that it has to be funny first before it is offensive. Humor is a means to accept and lighten what could potentially be a very controversial subject. But first there needs to be a joke, which is developed through timing. This film has clearly doesn't know how to properly set up black comedy like South Park or even Family Guy. Without humor the jokes just offend without actually making you laugh.

I usually judge a comedy by the same set of standards I do for a horror film. If a horror movie scares me, I will give it a positive review. If a comedy makes me laugh, I'll like it. This film has a distinct lack of enough funny moments. The most I ever did was give a light laugh or even just a chuckle every other scene. For the most part though, it just lets the potentially funny joke die.

That is one of the worst aspects of the film. The sketches just go on forever. What should have been a two or three minute scene just keeps going until the all humor is sucked out completely. Even the ending of this movie goes on forever, after the framing story with Greg Kinner and Dennis Quaid ends with a bizarre climax, and the credits role, they show two more sketches. Never before has an hour and twenty minute comedy go on for so long.

The writing is just horrible, never taking the time to properly set up a joke. Instead they go straight for the cringe. The actors do what they can, and what little humor this movie has comes from what they can work with. You can tell everyone was trying, but they just could not make it flow.

This is one of the worst comedies of the last few years. It is rather hard to imagine that Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Elizabeth Banks, Chloe Grace Mortez, Liev Schreiber, Richard Gere, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinner, Naomi Watts, Kate Bosworth, Uma Thurman, Kristen Bell, Gerald Butler, Terrence Howard, and about a hundred other great comedians and actors were all apart of this film.

Wow, so early in the year, and Movie 43 manages to surpass some of the worst film of the last 5 years. It's hard to imagine how they were able to get A LOT of talented actors and comedians to come up with....this abomination.

* (out of 4).