My Week In Movies - Another Parody

Dance Flick (2009) Surprise! Surprise! Yet again, I paid eight bucks to see one of these highly mediocre parody films at the theatre. Dance Flick mostly takes on You Got Served, Save The Last Dance, and Step It Up...none of which I've seen. Luckily, that doesn't really matter because as with most of the parody films of recent past, this movie is more about silly slapstick, pop culture references and mild gross-out humor. (There's also little digs at Fame, Hairspray, Flashdance and just about any other dance related film of the last 30 years.)Fortunately what this movie has working for it is the talent of the Wayans Brothers. While they're not the funniest group of guys in Hollywood, they are alot better at making this type of film then the team that has brought us Meet the Spartans, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie and Date Movie. Those guys kind of suck!

My Fake Fiance' (2009) As a rule of thumb, Made For TV Movies are absolutely no good. Unless the movie is about a real-life kidnapping that you can be guaranteed a TV-film is going to be boring and drawn out. This romantic comedy debuted on ABC Family a few months back. I caught the commercial in passing and was intrigued because it started Melissa Joan Hart. I've always enjoyed her work, going back to the Clarrisa days, and hadn't seen her in a while so I decided to TiVo it. It sat on my DVD for a while and before I deleted it I figured I'd watch the first five minutes on the off chance that it was any good. Well, the first five minutes did pull me in and what followed was actually a really charming and funny little film about two people who meet at a wedding and decide to fake their own wedding to receive all the cash and gifts. Joey Lawrence plays the other half of the couple, and him and Sabrina...I mean Melissa...have some real chemistry. At times the movie is a bit far-fetched and illogical, but if the creators had taken a little time and reworked the script a couple of times they could have had a theatrical release on their hands. Either way, it's an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes (two hours if you don't have a TiVo). Between the chemistry of Hart and Lawrence, the good ratings the premier airing received, and ABC Family's history of making sequels - I'm sure there will be another outing for these two in the near future. The movie is still airing on ABC Family, give it a chance if you happen upon it!

The World's Greatest Lover (1977) Let's talk about cable outfit AMC for just a moment. I came to this movie while searching for some Dom DeLuise roles that I hadn't seen before. Usually I stay away from movies when they air on commercial TV, but I just wanted to pay some respects to Dom and figured I'd grab the movie for free while it was on. Now AMC bills itself as a channel for movie lovers. I ask you, what movie lover likes to have their movie interrupted with commercial breaks every 5 minutes AND have advertisements for the same two shows popping up on the bottom half of the screen every two minutes. What a distracting way to watch a film! That aside, The World's Greatest Lover is a real comedy gem from the 1970's that I had never seen before. It stars the great Gene Wilder and the always entertaining Carol Kane as a depression era couple who travel to Hollywood to break into silent pictures. Dom DeLuise plays the over-the-top head of a failing movie studio. The film was written and directed by Gene Wilder and has very much the same feel as some of Mel Brooks' earlier work. However, watching the movie on TV I feel I didn't really get into it. Even skipping commercial breaks with TiVo, the breaks chopped up the continuity and I have a feeling some stuff was cut for television. If this movie were to air on one of the commercial free movie channels I would probably watch it again! Good old fashioned silly humor!

Fanboys (2008) Most recent road trip movies have one motivation for said road trip: sex! If it's not tracking down a girlfriend that has moved on to another relationship than the reason for the trip is to lose virginity to anonymous girl from internet. Fanboys has all the fun of these road trip movies but replaces the sex with Star Wars. It's 1999, and four friends decide to make a cross-country trip to break into George Lucas' house and see Star Wars Episode 1 before anyone else. For anyone with even a passing knowledge of the ins-and-outs of the Star Wars universe will find this movie pretty humorous. There's lost of gags about the feud between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans, there's plenty of discussions about things that happen in the SW movies, and there's lots of cameos from Star Wars alumni and other familiar faces.