‘Movie 43’ scores well below its titular number

I have seen a lot of awful movies in my life. Most of the time, I find myself saying I should have known better. Other times it looked like it had so much potential and I had to see it out of curiosity. “Movie 43” has possibly the largest ensemble cast ever filled with Oscar winners, comedians and other talented actors.

Even with all these great actors and the few awful ones who managed to sneak in, this movie falls in the category of “I should have known better.” The tagline for “Movie 43” is, “Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.” This is unfortunately true.

“Movie 43” has 12 short comedic skits with different big name directors and actors strung together. This must have sounded like a great idea to everyone involved but they forgot that the first thing about a comedy is that it must be funny. The writing is awful. There are no jokes or punch lines. A comedic skit usually builds up to some big laugh at the end or some payoff, but not once does this happen and they had 12 tries. The humor is all centered around feces, genitals, crude sex jokes and people reacting stupidly in situations involving the latter. The film aims to be offensive, provocative, dirty and weird, but it is none of these things. We’ve all seen poop, nudity and dirty jokes before and shoving mass amounts of them in our face does not impress anybody. The only offensive thing about this film is that I was expected to pay to see it.

Halle Berry was ripped apart by critics after appearing in “Catwoman” which went down in history as one of the worst movies ever made. Her career now has hit a new low and she is not the only one who must regret this. Some skits were okay. Some were too short and rushed, preventing them from becoming funny, while others were never funny and ran way too long. There were few moments where I chuckled and even fewer where I had a mild laugh, but never did I really laugh or enjoy a joke. The few jokes I would have laughed at were all in the trailer. Some of the actors do a good job and managed to bring me a small chuckle, but even Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Common, Greg Kinnear, Emma Stone, Seth Macfarlane or any of the A-list stars in this film could bring me the slightest enjoyment. I don’t see why they brought in different directors either. There are no notable different approaches or styles in any skit to differentiate who directed what. It all just looked like a big piles of feces similar to the one on screen that the film wanted me to laugh at again and again.

This was released in January to be hidden. With this many stars you would expect larger advertising and a better release, but “Movie 43” is so awful it was placed here to make a slight profit and not be a complete loss. Its poor quality is no secret. Producer Peter Farrelly has stated that he expected critics to hate this, but thought it would be a hit with college students. I love dirty humor. I will even defend last year’s “That’s My Boy.” While ridiculous, I could not stop laughing. “Movie 43” thinks it has made this kind of movie, but instead it has made what will be sure to go down as the biggest failure in comedy ever. Mr. Farrelly, I am a college student and love dirty jokes, but your movie sucks. It is not even worth a dollar rental at a Red Box or a free streaming on Netflix. To whoever is reading this, do yourself a favor and do not waste a penny or a second of your time on this awful film.

3/10