To get revenge on his little brother for an internet prank, a stoner and his friend distract him into attempting to locate Movie 43, the most banned film ever made (which they just made up), while they load up his laptop with porn viruses. As they search deeper into the dark corners of the internet, they discover numerous film clips of varying levels of depravity.
There are certain phrases that upon saying them to yourself you should be given an electric jolt to the gonads in the hope of eventually inducing some sort of Pavlovian aversion against even contemplating them again. Chief amongst these, upon hearing the universally negative backlash against a particular film, is the deadly utterance of “Come on, it can’t be that bad! Oh, yes it can.
If Carl Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Vampires Suck) have taught us anything with their unapologetic assaults on intelligence, it’s that the lowest common denominator can always be multiplied by a few factors. There are a great many things to criticise Movie 43 about, such as its disjointed anthology structure, unimaginative writing, pedestrian direction and particularly its raison d’être of attempting to be the most offensive film ever made. However, the greatest criticism you can level against it is also the most straightforward: it simply isn’t funny.
Jokes driven by such oh-so-hilarious content as gratuitous nudity, pseudo-incest, psychological child abuse, coprophilia and ill-timed menstruation are only part of what must be endured over the film’s scattershot running time. The shorts have central ideas like Hugh Jackman with a pair of testicles dangling from his chin; Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville fighting a pair of leprechauns; and Terence Howard coaching a basketball team with the wisdom that they will win because “They’re white; you’re black!
The principal overarching joke of high profile actors appearing in ludicrously inappropriate material might have been amusing if anything else about the film was, but while it’s quite likely that the starry cast had a lot of fun making the shorts (which was probably why they agreed to do them in the first place) this in no way translates to the finished product. The film as a whole can be summed up in a single line where Kate Bosworth, upon learning an iPod redesigned as a full-size naked woman now comes in black, laments, “Just when I though it couldn’t get more offensive.
As far as extras go, as well as a trailer that should be taken as a warning akin to a biohazard symbol alerting against even touching the DVD’s tainted packaging, there is also a deleted skit of Julianne Moore and Tony Shalhoub as parents who discover their lost daughter jiggling topless in a Mardi Gras video. Quite how anything can be deemed unworthy when the film’s entire purpose is to be as thoughtlessly gross-out as possible is anyone’s guess.
Overall Verdict: Move 43 is a unremitting blitzkrieg against creativity and humour. Unless your idea of funny is watching a cartoon cat screwing a teddy bear while sodomising itself with a hairbrush, avoid this like bubonic plague.
Special Features:
Trailer
Deleted Short “Find Our Daughter
Reviewer: Andrew Marshall