Movies making fun of other movies through satire has become a boring gimmick. With minimal creativity, Epic Movie proves just how worn out the genre is.
The plot, if it's even worth calling it that, is about four people who get trapped in Willy Wonka's factory because Willy wants to put their body parts into his candy. Can you guess where Willy gets the nuts for his candy bars? To escape Wonka's taunt of, “Who wants to play with Willy?” The four go through a wardrobe into the land of Gnarnia. You know, with a silent “G” to avoid copyright laws. There, they must do battle with The White Bitch. WOW! These creative writers came up with changing The White Witch's name to White Bitch. I wonder how long it took them to come up with that?
Everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to Click to Superman Returns gets skewered, but none very well. The best movie moment comes when they go to Hogwarts and find that Hermione is a pregnant chain smoker.
Kal Penn leads a not very notable cast. Penn's biggest moment comes when the White Bitch points out her castle and it ends up being a White Castle restaurant. Penn then says, “I think I've been there before.” Of course this is a reference to Penn's movie, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. I can just see the producers hoping and praying that they could get Penn to do this movie just so they could include that joke. Campbell is as boring here as he was in Date Movie. Mays spends the entire film imitating Anna Faris.
The entertainment of Epic Movie is based on two factors. First, it is how well you recognize all of the movies and MTV television shows that get referenced here. The second is how well you think the writers poke fun at those films. Sadly the writers can think of little more than just adding some swear words and sexual innuendoes. Clearly this movie is made for teenagers, and not very bright ones.
