Disaster Movie Parent Guide

I suspect Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the writing/directing team that created this film and the more than half-dozen clones previous to it, laugh heartily and take great delight with every scathing negative review they read. They are not in the business of moviemaking to create anything even close to an artful rendition. They instead are using a camera and microphone to patch together barely enough schoolyard-minded jokes and gross out gags to reach a total running time that will qualify as a “movie.”

Then they hand the final project to their distributor—Lionsgate in the US, Alliance Films in Canada, and a bevy of other eager business-types in the rest of the free world—and wait for the dollars to roll in. And, unfortunately, roll in they do. These films actually make money, especially after these two entrepreneurs learned to cut back on the sex just enough to get a PG-13 rating in the US. (Their first Scary Movie was R, which locked out their target audience.)

The problem here isn’t Friedberg and Seltzer. Heaven knows I, and many others, would love to see these guys take on a different profession. But we live in a free world and all the ups and downs that go with that clichŽd statement. Instead, the real problem lies with the parents who haven’t the foggiest notion about what is in these movies, which are not only getting even more painful from an artistic perspective, but are also becoming increasingly mean spirited.

There is no need to “review” this film. It has no plot… but it does have a point: To make money. However, I couldn’t help but wonder how the six-year-old sitting a few seats down from me in the showing I had to pay to get into (the studio knows better than to offer this critic a screening) would interpret a scene where someone is punching a pregnant teenager in the stomach? Or does he know that a pregnant woman can’t spray milk from her bulging breasts to ward off her attacker? Or does he get the joke when the same character states (referring to her fetus) “It’s time to get the sea monkey plastered” and then downs a bottle of hard liquor?

If you don’t think your kids are ready to see rabies-infected versions of chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore eating the same pregnant girl and ripping her skin to the bones while she is still talking (she eventually dies while the rodents nibble on her vertebrae), then please note the title, and don’t send them to the theater. Or if you aren’t the type that laughs when a woman says, “I have a yeast infection,” and then pulls a loaf of sourdough bread out from under her skirt, skip this movie. If watching a woman eat a broken glass bottle with blood gushing from cuts on her lips and face for over a minute isn’t your idea of a good time, go rent a better DVD instead. If drinking urine and viewing a man spread excrement over his face won’t make you chuckle, then please, please, tell your kids to see a different film.

This movie features constant, non-stop, pervasive (yes… I’m purposely being redundant) sexual innuendo and violence (played for laughs, of course). It contains frequent derogatory comments aimed toward religion, women, men and homosexuals. It isn’t funny… not even the type of funny that may cause a guilty chuckle. So unless you want to make a donation encouraging further projects of this nature, you might want to find a worthier cause for your box office dollars.

About author

Rod Gustafson

Rod Gustafson has worked in various media industries since 1977. He founded Parent Previews in 1993, and today continues to write and broadcast the reviews in newspapers, on radio and (of course) on the Internet. His efforts also include writing and researching media in all its forms and observing how it effects society and culture. He and his wife Donna have four children.