Movie 43 Reviews

The biggest cast ever assembled for the most outrageous comedy ever made.

Waste of time movie! Needless to say an amazing cast has been wasted. I mean there are some Oscar winners and nominees in this movie. Which actors read this script and though it was funny. It tries to be offensive, but in this effort loses any kind of hilarity and originality. There is absolutely nothing about this movie. In conclusion not only is this movie unfunny, it is unoriginal, immature, and worthless. Terrible script and unoriginality make this movie far from what it can be with such a talented cast. Do not waste your money on this movie.

A series of interconnected short films follows a washed-up producer as he pitches insane story lines featuring some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Can't say I was a fan. Just a pile of little skits. Half star for Emma Stone.

There were two driving reasons why I chose to go see Movie 43, the collection of 13 comedy sketches from different writers and directors. First, the red band trailer made me laugh, so I figured it was worth a shot. If one sketch didn't work, there was always another ready to cleanse my comedic palate. The other reason is that I have been compiling sketches written by myself and my friends with the intent to make my own sketch comedy movie in 2013. Part of me was also concerned that something so high-profile might extinguish my own project; maybe we came up with similar material with sketches. After watching Movie 43, a tasteless, disconnected, and ultimately unfunny collective, I have renewed hope for my own project's success.

Like most sketch comedy collections, Movie 43 is extremely hit or miss. This ain't no Kentucky Fried Movie or even the Kids in the Hall flick. Rating this worth viewing depends on which side racks up the most. Unfortunately, there's more terribleness than greatness on display, but allow me to briefly call out the film's true highlights. The best segment in the movie, the one that had me laughing the longest, was a bizarre fake commercial that does nothing more than presuppose that machines, as we know them, are really filled with small children to do the labor. Seeing little urchins inside a copy machine or an ATM, looking so sad, with the faux serious music welling up, it made me double over in laughter. With the actual vignettes, "Homeschooled" and "Truth or Dare" where the standouts that drew genuine laughter. "Homeschooled" is about a mother and father (real-life couple Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber) giving their son the total high school experience, which amounts to degrading humiliation. Dad makes fun of his son's penis in the shower. Mom and Dad throw a party with the cool kids but don't invite their son. Dad tapes his son to a flagpole. The kid gets his first awkward kiss thanks to his mom. It's outrageous without falling victim into being crass for the sake of crass, a common sin amongst many of the vignettes. "Truth or Dare" starts off innocuously enough with Halle Berry (Cloud Atlas) and Stephen Merchant (Hall Pass) on a blind date. As the date progresses, they get into an escalating game of truth or dare that each has them doing offensive acts, like blowing out the candles on a blind kid's birthday cake. This segment knows when to go for broke with it silliness and it doesn't wear out its welcome, another cardinal sin amidst the other vignettes.

But lo, the unfunny sketches, or more accurately the disappointing sketches, outnumber the enjoyable. Far too often the sketches are of the one joke variety and the comedy rarely leaves those limited parameters. So a sketch about a blind date with a guy who has testicles hanging from his chin (Hugh Jackman) is... pretty much just that. There's no real variation or complications or sense of build. It's just that. A commercial about an iPod built to model a naked lady is... exactly that and nothing more. A speed dating session with famous DC superheroes like Batman (Jason Sudeikis), Robin (Justin Long), Supergirl (Kristen Bell) and others should be far cleverer than what we get. While I laughed at the sports sketch "Victory's Glory," it really all boils down to one joke: black people are better than white people at basketball. That's it. "Middleschool Date" starts off interesting with a teen girl (Chloe Grace Moritz) getting her period on a date and the clueless men around her freaking out that she is dying. However, this is the one sketch that doesn't go far enough. It really needed to increase the absurdity of the situation but it ends all too quickly and with little incident. "Happy Birthday" involves two roommates (Johnny Knoxville, Sean William Scott) interrogating an angry leprechaun (Gerard Butler) for his gold. It pretty much just sticks to slapstick and vulgar name-calling. That's the more tiresome aspect of Movie 43, the collective feeling that it's trying so desperately to be shocking rather than, you know, funny.

The worst offenders of comedy are the scathingly unfunny "Veronica" and "The Proposition." With "Veronica," Kieran Culkin tries to woo his lady (Emma Stone) with a series of off-putting sexual remarks, delivered in an off-putting "bad poetry deliver" manner, while the film is off-puttingly shot with self-conscious angles that do nothing for the comedy. It's a wreck. "The Proposition" is just one big poop joke. It's far more gross than gross-out.

The frame story connecting the varied vignettes is completely unnecessary. Well, I suppose there is one point for its addition, namely to pad out the running time to a more feature-length 94 minutes. The wraparound storyline with Dennis Quaid pitching more and more desperate movie ideas never serves up any good jokes. Its only significance is to setup an ironic counterpoint that gets predictable and old fast. Example: Quaid says, "It's a movie with a lot of heart and tenderness," and we cut to a couple that plans on pooping on each other. See? You can figure out its setup formula pretty quick. I don't understand why the people behind Movie 43 thought the perfect solution to pad out their running time was a dumb wraparound. These sketches don't need a frame story; the audience is not looking for a logical link. For that matter why is the guy also pitching commercials? I would have preferred that the frame story was completely dropped and I got to have two or three more sketches, thus perhaps bettering the film's ultimate funny/unfunny tally.

There will be a modicum of appeal watching very famous people getting a chance to cut loose, play dirty, and do some very outrageous and un-Oscar related hijinks. The big name actors do everything they can to elevate the material, but too many sketches are one joke stretched too thin. I suppose there may be contingents of people that will go into hysterical fits just seeing Hugh Jackman with chin testicles (I think the Goblin King in The Hobbit beat him to it), just like there will always people who bust a gut when a child or an old person says something inappropriate for their age, or when someone gets kicked in the nuts (the normal ones). I just found the majority of Movie 43 to be lacking. It settles far too easily on shocking sight gags and vulgarity without a truly witty send-up. It wants to be offensive, it gleefully revels in topics it believes would offend the delicate sensibilities of an audience, but being offensive and being funny are not automatically synonymous. You have to put real work into comedy. Movie 43 isn't it.

Nate's Grade: C-

Aside from some chuckles here and there, Movie 43 is pretty much an unmitigated disaster for everyone involved, starting with Dennis Quaid (who looks like a meth user, loitering outside of a 7-11) all the way to poor Chloe Moretz, who is straddled with making the funny out of smearing menstrual blood all over a kitchen wall. The film has no real premise; it is just a series of short skits, featuring many big name actors, directed by various "comedy" directors, very thinly connected by one overarching sketch. The skits are all designed to be vulgar, racy, and scatological in terms of their content and they rarely feel anything above lazy and tired. I know comedy is subjective, so if you laugh, good on you, but I love to laugh and this movie...well I'm just glad that there were not in fact 43 sketches.

I will give Movie 43 one praise, Liev Schreiber tends to win me over in anything, so the fact that he brought his wife along (Naomi Watts) for one skit about parents who are homeschooling their child as well as humiliating him to better help him to have a true high school experience was admirable, given that it landed most of its jokes for me. The rest is pretty much a mess, with various chuckles sure, but only in sporadic moments, as some of these sketches are maybe good in concept (superhero speed-dating), but mostly terrible in execution. Imagine you are watching Saturday Night Live, except every sketch has one or two hosts in it, and the sketches fall apart almost instantly, that is pretty much what Movie 43 amounts to.

And just for the sake of it, Movie 43 features films directed by Peter Farrelly, Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Car, Rusty Cundieff, Griffin Dunne, James Gunn, and Brett Ratner. It stars Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Richard Gere, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, Liev Schreiber, Namoi Watts, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Halle Berry, Justin Long, Kristen Bell, Seann William Scott, and Johnny Knoxville, among others. It is a huge cast, the largest ensemble ever, despite not having all of them being involved in the same basic story, but it almost feels like most of them did this as a dare, which is fitting, given the concepts of some of these shorts. The movie is just awful for the most part, making the bits that do work just seem worse by the time it is all over.

With a title that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the movie itself, "Movie 43" is essentially a bunch of individual comedy sketches that are not so much offensively vulgar (as promised) as they are offensively unfunny; and sloppily put together at that. Directed by a slew of different directors (but mostly by Peter Ferrelly) and starring Kate Winslet, Liev Schreiber, Anna Faris, Naomi Watts, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and the list goes on (but you've surely seen the trailers by now) "Movie 43" is the newest movie hoping to push the boundaries of the raunchy American comedy. So, does it succeed? My consensus has to be...ehhhhhhh.

Yes, this is all very sophomoric, but that's not to say that there are not laughs to be found. In saying that, while I don't share quite the same loathsome regard for this film as many of my fellow critics do, those who come out of "Movie 43" proclaiming it a laugh riot, are probably the same people who classify Adam Sandler as a comedian or amuse themselves by watching syndicated episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos. Even with its star power and the potential comedic material each sketch promises, "Movie 43" isn't really a film worth watching. In fact, I will go so far as to make the early prediction that this is one film which seems destined to make it onto more than a few peoples "worst of 2013" lists.

Aside from the first two sketches (which are admittedly pretty damn funny) a final sketch which works primarily because of Terrence Howard (the African American basketball skit from the trailer) and a post final credit segment concerning a woman played by Elizabeth Banks, who is jealous of her boyfriend's pet cat (animated cat) that is somewhat funny, "Movie 43" is simply not nearly as funny as it promotes itself to be. In fact, about an hour and fifteen minutes of this movie is so unfunny, that it rivals anything seen in the "Scary Movie" franchise. And to top it all off, it's not like I haven't seen comedies which are more vulgar than this; and done better. So even to say that one should see "Movie 43" because it is the most vulgar movie of all time is in fact a misnomer; but one which will undoubtedly result in garnering more ticket sales.

Side Note: This is the type of sketch comedy movie that seems as if the actors had more fun making it than anybody could have watching it. So, no doubt there will be many critical reviews comparing this film to a bad episode of Saturday Night Live, in a tired attempt at comedy. But creating comedic parallels between "Movie 43" and SNL may be a misconception, when sadly most of this film is motivated by uninventive poo poo and pee pee jokes, more so the likes of the defunked MADtv, than any other sketch comedy show.

Final Thought: Even though it's the cocktail of wishful thinking that maybe the next bit is going to be better than the last boring bit, or the morbid curiosity that comes from wanting to see who will be the next big name actor/actress to make an appearance that does give this film it's momentum, "Movie 43" is severely hindered by the fact that it contains a runtime longer than 15 minutes. So, here's my advice: The first sketch in this movie centers around a woman played by Kate Winslet going out on a blind date, only to discover that it is with a man played by Hugh Jackman. Delighted by her good fortune, she prepares to accompany him for dinner. But when Jackman takes off his scarf, it is discovered that he has been hiding a mortifyingly hilarious secret. Now, I have just outlined the funniest sketch of the entire film. So, if you sit through this one, and don't laugh once, what I want you to do is, get up, make your way to the theater's box office and ask for your money back, because for you, it will only get worse from here.

Written by Markus Robinson, Edited by Nicole I. Ashland

Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus

"Movie 43" is the most cynical, bastardly, ashamedly horrible comedy to hit the big screen in years. This cast must have been paid a fortune to be a part of this dreadfully terrible "film?". The plot is literally about a writer pitching an idea about a series of short films, which don't even make any sense. And when a film makes you wonder is the film is even trying to break the illusion if it's a film, then you know film is at a new low. Never have I ever seen a worse comedy before, but my god will I be talking about it forever. The direction is sloppy, the comedy is not even present, the acting is ham-handed, and there is really no plot to the film. Honestly, this is a film that has to rely on random commercials popping up on the screen to reach it's 90 minute bloated running time. "Movie 43 is probably the biggest travesty I've seen in my life. It's not a movie. It's a bunch of actors having fun in front of the camera, creating the most disturbing film experience of all time!

Awful...Just Awful. One funny segment about halfway through. But generally you just sit there wondering how the hell they got all these people to be in this horrible, horrible movie.

Many have called this the worst movie of the year. I haven't seen "The Host" yet, but I'll compare the two of them if I ever end up seeing that pile of garbage. It's kind of difficult to see exactly who would enjoy this kind of thing. Most of the characters are just awful, on a level that most real people couldn't get to even if they tried. We have Kate Winslet as the world's most superficial woman, who is horrified by Hugh Jackman's testicles...on his neck. We've got Naomi Watts as a mom homeschooling her child...with an incestuous lust for her own son. We've got Anna Faris as a woman ready to take the next step with her boyfriend...by begging him to crap on her. Literally. It only gets worse from there. It's getting a higher review than it deserves, but there's clearly potential. If thought had been put into this, it would have been hysterical.
The biggest loser out of the entire group is poor Chloe Moretz, whose role is a girl who gets her period for the first time while the men in her life completely freak the hell out. Considering that scene starts with two pre-pubescent kids feeling each other up, it's the sickest sexual act between kids since "Kids." It's at that moment that this movie goes from purely gross to possibly illegal. It's also eerily similar to her role in the horror film "Carrie," except with less bratty teenage girls taunting her in a shower.

Movie 43 isn't a movie at all. With over 10 writers and 10 directors, it's merely a collection of shorts with little meaning to any of them. It's a bit embarrassing that a Farrelly has his name attached to it.

They put a skit in between the shorts to give them some sort of cohesion, but it was stupid. It was lame and didn't tie any of the shorts together in any way. Their stories didn't tie in at all. The skit between the movie, just as most of the shorts, have no ending. Usually no beginning or story of any kind to them. It becomes frustrating and there's no payoff.

The first short in Movie 43 starts out funny enough, but the laughs become increasingly rare as this clunker of a movie sputters along. Every actor involved in Movie 43 is wasted. There's some young talent that could be hurt more than helped by appearing in a movie like this. You'll get almost as many laughs by watching the Red-band trailer than you would going to the theater to watch Movie 43, but you'll save some cash and won't have to sit through the entire film.

There's no real reason to go see Movie 43, and if you wait until it comes to a movie channel, you can see it having only paid your monthly subscription.

I'm really at a loss for words and still scratching my head as to how they got so many award winning actors/actresses to appear in this. I was watching a collage of graphic and witty skits that turned the stars into pranksters and the audience into the ones Punk'd. Movie 43 is Hollywood playing a practical joke. I'm still waiting for Ashton to run out of the back laughing with his backwards hat and headphones.

Here's what I don't get: the trailer for this movie is hilarious. But during this movie, when I saw the exact same lines that made me laugh in the trailer, they somehow weren't funny. They used the same takes, the same jokes...why was everything that was funny in the trailer not funny in this movie? Does it have to do with the editing? I don't get it! I wasn't incredibly offended by any of it (except for the mother-son incest in the second sketch - that was just sickening), but it's just childish, gross, and unbelievably boring. What's sad is that a lot of the IDEAS behind the sketches are really funny. This could have been hilarious. But the execution is so awful that almost every possible drop of humor is drained out of it. I will admit, there were 3 sketches that kind of made me laugh (The Middleschool Date, Superhero Speed Dating, and Victory's Glory), but the rest of it was just stupid. What a huge waste of potential and talent.

The Catch- pretty disturbing, not seeing the point of having it in here.
Homeschooled- in general, way too disturbing.
The Proposition-really disgusting
Veronica-strange and embarassing
iBabe- funny the way it mocked Apple products
Superhero Speed Dating- boring
Machine Kids- pointless
Middleschool Date- probably the funniest one
Tampax- loved the tampon commercial mocking. very funny.
Happy Birthday- strange and boring.
Truth or Dare-at first awkward, then it got really creepy.
Victory's Glory-no comment...

Movie 43
Directors: Bob Odenkirk, Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Peter Farelly, Patrik Forsberg, Will Graham, James Gunn, Brett Ratner, Jonathan van Tulleken
Cast: Everyone You've Ever Seen in a Film
Rated: R
Running Time: 94 Minutes

Read any review for the sketch comedy omnibus Movie 43, and you'll hear that it's one of the worst movies ever made: The metaphorical equivalent to the apartheid, and a clear sign that humanity has descented into the depths of hell for comedic entertainment. A movie solely advertised for celebrities doing disgusting things for an hour-and-half without any plot, with a couple of recognisable directors thrown in for good measure to tarnish their names through helping to make such garbage. It's been years since such a widely panned movie has been released, and what makes the situation all the more compelling is that seemingly half of Hollywood is involved. Actors include Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Anna Faris, and Chris Pratt, and that's only within the first 20 minutes. Jammed to the brim with stars like the ultimate cheat for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, it elevates Movie 43 beyond the point of traditional failure. This movie shouldn't have been dumped in the dog days of January with a low theater count and a shoddy marketing effort. With a cast like this, it should be a priority project released on a good date in the middle of summer. Even with mediocre material, it's possible to get a good audience to see the film, rather than the low count which made up its abysmal $4,805,878 opening weekend.

It wasn't until a sketch involving a man being asked by his fiance to poop on her when I realised there wasn't even enough hilarity to include in a trailer.

Movie 43 certainly isn't one of the worst movies ever made, but it's still fairly terrible. We're not even working on a ratio of good to bad sketches. Out of the 14 total sketches, only three manage to be consistently amusing; as in a few solid chuckles. The best metaphor wouldn't be the apartheid, but rather the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic scenario. The entire film is a barren wasteland of morbid hopelessness, but there are still a few small pleasures which you accept due to the sheer direness of your situation. In any other feature, a parody commercial involving children operating machines from the inside might be groanworthy, but here it's the unopened bottle of Coke in an abandoned and raided supermarket. A flat bottle of soda wouldn't be appreciated in our modern day society, but after showering of nuclear explosions across the country, it'd be a gem to lighten our fading spirits against the bleak reality which dominates every aspect of life.

Movie 43 contains some moments of mild hilarity, but it's difficult to tell if the bits are genuinely funny, or just decent in comparison to a cartoon cat aggressively masturbating to a picture of his master in a spoof of a TV show which doesn't exist. It deserves to die a quick death, as to not further humiliate those involved, and should hopefully find a space on a .99 cent DVD rack by at least July. For every piece of Shakespeare the room full of monkeys churns out, there're a thousand pieces of trash. Considering all the actors and directors involved with the film, this is one of them.

"Movie 43 is an utter terrible disgrace and lame excuse to call itself a "feature film" this film is so awful you should pay not to see it. All the acting talents are simply wasted on a film that should not have even made it to theaters in the first place." .. F

Quite possibly the worst movie I've ever paid to see in a theater. I knew the reviews were noxious, but I expected to at least laugh a few times. No dice. Why didn't I walk out the seven or eight times I considered it?

Did they know what they were making?! Some funny stuff was in the midst of this mess of comedy and all stars, but I found myself more disturbed afterwords than anything else.

Heh, looks like a half-star rating is possible, but gotta at least give it a tiny level of credit for having a few moments of at least marginal value. Unfortunately almost all of those moments were already in the trailer.

This was really stupid. A bunch of big celebs make short films about ridiculous things.
That being said, there were a few times I was damn near crying from laughing so hard. For this alone it is saved from a 1 out of 5. Definitely a rental's worth.

On the surface, Movie 43, with its large cast that includes Oscar winners as well as Seth MacFarlane who hosts the Oscars this year, looks like yet another one of those big studio ensemble movies Hollywood is limping to the barn with. Think the horrid Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve. But two things: one, Movie 43 boasts an R rating and two, it was made for a paltry $6 million, so you can at least watch it knowing these big stars aren't doing it for a quick paycheck. No, folks like Halle Berry and Terence Howard are all too eager to get crazy. Made up of twelve different stories, brought to us by different directors (including Elizabeth Banks, making her debut) and around seventeen screenwriters, all of which mostly strain to be outrageous, Movie 43 is an exhausting exercise in shock. They range from Hugh Jackman sporting testicles on his chin, literally, while on a date with Kate Winslet, to a woman who enjoys feces (and who better to be that girl than Anna Faris) to Kieran Culkin seductively telling Emma Stone "I want to give you a hickey on your vagina." The effect is mind-numbing, he only standouts are Liev Schrieber and Naomi Watts as home school parents for whom the term overbearing is an understatement and Banks' 'Middle School Date' where she gives men much-deserved ridicule over their squeamishness about menstruation. Props to her for providing some laughs that stick in the throat. It's still early, but Movie 43 could defintiely be Worst Movie of 2013 number 1.