"43" Reasons You Should Avoid this Movie

What is it that makes comedy funny? Twelve directors tried answering that question by combining a huge ensemble cast with obscure, character breaking situations and calling it Movie 43. Boy, were these guys wrong. Released just this year, Movie 43 is a sketch comedy with tons of big names and lots of gross out humor, but it fails to deliver a single laugh.

The main premise to Movie 43 is a crazy guy (played by Dennis Quaid) trying to pitch his wacky sketches to a major movie executive. His ideas are so bad that he literally holds the exec at gunpoint so they can even be considered for a feature.

And then the movie goes on to show us said horrible sketches for a very painful hour and a half.

My problem with this movie is the sketches try so hard to be outrageous that they end up being really stupid. One good example is the first sketch, where a business woman (played by Kate Winslet) goes on a blind date with a bachelor of the year (played by Hugh Jackman) only to find out he has a certain male body part hanging on his neck. The woman's reactions were kind of funny at first, but the fact that the bachelor and every other character are completely oblivious make the sketch go on far too long.

Somebody's having a bad date.

None of the sketches reflect any clever writing either- they kind of take one joke and see how long they can drag it out. One sketch involves a teen girl (played by Chloe Grace Moretz from Kick Ass) shocking her boyfriend and his brother by being unprepared for her first period. Another sketch features "The iBabe," an mp3 player designed to look like a naked woman that results in dismemberment of its male users. The list just goes on. 

Another thing that really irked me about Movie 43 is the way it humiliates its huge cast of stars. We see Halle Berry playing a game of truth or dare where anything goes, Anna Faris wanting her boyfriend to defecate on her, and Gerard Butler being a rough and tumble, foul mouthed leprechaun. Not only does the movie's huge cast give off a sense of claustrophobia, but we've seen this cast do much better.     

Not about to give up his pot of gold. 

There's only one real sketch I liked in Movie 43, and it was the main attraction of the film's trailer. This sketch is set in the 50's, and stars Terrence Howard as the coach of a black basketball team going off against an all white team. In a parody of movies like Remember the Titans, Terrence Howard has two words that insist his team will win the game:

In a movie with a star studded cast and headed by 12 directors, it's disappointing to see only one scene that's actually funny. This amounts to about 10 minutes out of a 90 minute movie. I could go on to list 43 reasons why this movie should be avoided, but I think by now you get the point. Movie 43 is a tasteless piece of cinema that feels like it was written by a bunch of teenagers. My verdict is a 2 out of 10.