Date Movie

The days of Airplane!, where the genre and it's conventions are satired and individual characters are created and allowed to form their own identity within that framework, are gone. Now the humor comes (or at least is supposed to come) from our recollection of a specific scene, and characters are simply amalgamations instead of achetypes. For today's parody movie to be funny, two things have to occur: 1) The audience has to be familiar with the movies it's making fun of, and 2) it has to have a cast that's funny enough to transcend a level of humor that barely rises above the standard middle school fart joke. Sadly, I was aware of all the girly date movies this was satiring, so you can take that for what it's worth. The cast, though, with a few exceptions, was up to the challenge. Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge, in particular, took what lesser actors would have done, simply imitating Dustin Hoffman and Streisand's roles in Meet the Fockers, and went so over the top that they stole the whole movie. So if you like the Hot Shots and Scary Movies of the world, you'll find a lot to like in this. Otherwise, save your money.