REVIEW - MOVIE 43

It's easy not to laugh. Just tell yourself you're going to see a drama. Tell yourself Movie 43 is not a funny film, and it might surprise you. In fact, let me. Movie 43 is not a funny film. I did laugh, but very rarely, and when the gag rate is this high, that's a bad sign. Another bad sign is when you realise that your everyday life is, on the whole, funnier than the comedy you just walked out of. That might make you laugh at least. A series of short sketches, so short that you may have seen most of some of them in trailers, connected by a framing device which is wholly different in the US and internationally, for no evident reason. The one I saw was offensively unfunny (in that I was offended that the writers thought any member of the human race, myself included, could find it funny), but so too is the majority of this enterprise. It will be, to many who see it (but many more who don't), just offensive. Puerility is a trait which most of us almost comprehensively exhaust during adolescence, and Movie 43 thrives on it. I saw and heard writers straining to make me cringe and wince and gag and reel... but haven't I been here before? Aren't these the same gay, genital-related, bullying, sex, race and shit (literally) jokes we all told and heard when we were 12? The cast of estimable Hollywood stars participate in the apparent hope of proving how game they are - for most, the only positive will be that they will never appear in anything quite as bad as this for the remainder of their careers (this doesn't include Seann William Scott).