Film Summary: Several celebrities in various R-rated comedy sketches. That's all you need to know.
I have never been a huge fan of vulgar comedies. But there have been gems in the past where I have been able to look past the outlandish cursing and sexual references and enjoy the movie because of their interesting characters and well-developed stories. Movie 43 has many characters and stories, but none of them worth the title of "interesting" or "well-developed". Yes, the movie is unlike others as it is played out through a series of sketches while a "plot" about a group of immature boys who are trying to find this infamous film unfolds, but the only thing that vaguely tries to capture the audiences attention is a slur of extreme shock-value.
While trying to think of ways this film could have been pulled off, I came across the idea that maybe these sketches would have been better off on their own than clustered together in a mess of a movie. CollegeHumor and Funny or Die have had overwhelming viral success doing exactly what this movie tried to do. Videos such as Will Ferrell's "The Landlord" have grown to be just as well-received and loved as several popular movies. And with the continuous uprising of YouTube and the creative minds that upload to the site daily, viewers are being drawn closer into this quick and easy form of entertainment. Why drive all the way to the theater and pay ten bucks to see a movie when there are several sites online that you can access from your own home that can satisfy an audience with the shortest of attention spans?
Now the question stands: Could Movie 43 be cinema's desperate attempt to compete with or overshadow their internet rivals?
This isn't Hollywood's first attempt at a film such as Movie 43. 1977's Kentucky Fried Movie continues to be loved by movie-goers (and it was popular enough to earn a spot on VH1's "I Love the 70's), and it shares primarily the same formula as Movie 43; dark and in-your-face sketches thrown together in movie form. What made Kentucky Fried Movie so special though was that it was the first of its kind. The gang of Saturday Night Live, which was running around its second season, and the boys of Monty Python were really the only heavy hitters in sketch comedy the popular entertainment world had at the time. Nowadays, there are countless shows and YouTube channels that offer the very same thing, and are many times funnier than what gets thrown into the spotlight. Perhaps, if released separately on the web, the contents of Movie 43 wouldn't have felt like an overkill of cursing and nudity.
Movie 43 fails to do little more than stir up a few cheap laughs (I will congratulate them for pulling off a successful Batman/Robin joke) and make audience cringe from an overdose of shock-value. Perhaps in a different light, the sketches could be considered quite funny. But, thrown together like they were, the comedy falls short. Viewers are left with a sour taste in their mouths as they try to decide whether what they have watched was actually funny or just too vulgar to be believed.
FINAL VERDICT: Skip it and rent something else
