The creators of Scary Movie have returned with their latest in the spoof genre, the aptly titled Epic Movie. The film stars Kal Penn, Adam Campbell, Jayma Mays and Faune Chambers as four orphans who must stop the evil queen, The White Bitch of Gnarnia (Jennifer Coolidge).
Epic Movie picks very odd movies to spoof, most of which were comedies to begin with, including The Chronicles of Narnia, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Harry Potter series and Nacho Libre, to name a few. While the Scary Movie trilogy worked, for the most part, because it made fun of the serious plot points and clichés of horror films, fantasy films and comedy films are not meant to be taken seriously. As a result, the lampooning of Epic Movie seems uncalled for.
The structure of the film itself is not very stable: it feels like a bunch of gags strung together that do not serve the plot or help develop any theme. Comedy doesn’t need sophistication, but it does need some degree of thought.
Credit is deserved, however, in some ways. Aslo (Fred Willard), based on Aslan from Narnia, generates the most laughs, as Willard is a veteran comedian and is able to correctly pinpoint comedic timing. Kal Penn and Adam Campbell also manage to elicit a few snickers as they use their experience with the spoof genre to make shoddy material work — at least a little.
There is nothing epic about Epic Movie. Don’t see it in theaters, don’t wait for it to come out on video. If someday you’re on a plane, and it’s the only in-flight movie option, then you might consider giving it a watch.