Review of The Darwin Awards (2007) by Joshua T — 12 Dec 2007

The Dawin Awards are a fascinating subject. People dying in the most idiotic ways can be very perversly interesting. Reinacting these incidents really gives you a much more clear idea of what was going through these people's heads when they made lethal mistakes. However, this type of subject feels like it would work as a TV series, not a movie.

Naturally, if you make a movie, you have to have a narrative with characters. Both of these elements in The Darwin Awards are very weak. A homocide detective with hemophelia who has a fascination with Darwin Awards teams up with a hot-headed female detective. They roam around the country investigating several real Darwin Award cases from a man who accidentily blows up his car with dynamite to a doped-up Metallica fan who rams his car into his best friend.

These incidents are quite interesting and quite funny. The only problem is they crowd the screen making the detective story seem dull, overdone, and completely predictable. Do you think the two start off hating each other and later end up in bed together? Do you think they'll learn a valuable lesson from each other? Do you think they have lots of lovable slapstick laughs? If you said yes to all three, you may not be a candidate for the infamous Dawin Awards. And the addition of a documentarian following them around adds nothing to the film.

Watching a movie like The Darwin Awards made me think of watching a movie based on Rescue 911 or Unsolved Mysteries. Sure, the accident reinactments are hilarious and infinitely interesting, but they take up so much of the movie, I wonder why the filmmakers didn't just drop the whole detective story. I don't know if that would make a good movie, but would most certainly be a better movie.