Metacritic Film

Epic Movie

Starring Kal Penn, Adam Campbell, Jennifer Coolidge, Jayma Mays, Faune A. Chambers, Crispin Glover, Carmen Electra, and Fred Willard

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and some comic violence

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Adventure  |  Comedy
86 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters January 26, 2007

The twisted minds of two of the six writers of "Scary Movie" tackle the biggest mega-blockbusters of all time in Epic Movie.

WRITTEN BY
Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer

DIRECTED BY
Jason Friedberg
Aaron Seltzer

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

17 / 100

Critic Reviews

67 Entertainment Weekly
Epic Movie is just timely enough to conclude with a wink and a nod to Borat. I only wish that it had been bold enough to go Borat on HIM.
40 Los Angeles Times Alex Chun
The real problem with Epic Movie is that while it does a decent job imitating films, it never bothers to make fun of or have fun with them, which is what Friedberg and Seltzer did so well with "Scary Movie."
40 The New York Times
The humor is coarse and occasionally funny. The archly bombastic score, by Edward Sheamur, is the only thing you might call witty. But happily, Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard show up, as the White Bitch and Aslo the Lion, to add some easy, demented class.
30 Chicago Reader
The cinematic equivalent of a tapeworm, this delivers few laughs beyond the initial chuckles of recognition. Seltzer and Friedberg (who also directed) have another script in development called "Raunchy Movie"; apparently one idea they haven't yet considered is "Watchable Movie."
30 Variety
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, big studio Hollywood hitmakers should consider themselves lauded to the max in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Selzer's Epic Movie, the latest (and epically unfunny) entry in the movie parody franchise.
25 ReelViews
Epic Movie is a waste of time. It's like a bad issue of "Cracked Magazine" come to life. It's not so much painful as it is sleep inducing.
25 TV Guide
The sadists responsible for the painfully unfunny "Date Movie" (2006) are back, and this time they've outdone themselves: This theater-clearer is even less amusing than its terrible predecessor, a spoof so devoid of laughs it can longer be categorized as a comedy.
25 New York Daily News
Still, if it gets little else right, at least Epic Movie is accurately titled: It may be only 86 minutes long, but it feels as if it lasts forever.
25 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer must be stopped. For the last two years, this filmmaking team has created a series of spoof movies so feeble, shoddy and unfunny that they may be part of a diabolical, "Manchurian Candidate"-like plot to stunt the intellectual development of American adolescents.
20 LA Weekly Jim Ridley
By the time this dud drops on NetFlix, it'll be as obsolete as a Chia pet jokebook.
20 The Hollywood Reporter
A monumentally unfunny time-waster.
20 Film Threat Zack Haddad
It is just too bad that the film isn't called "Miniscule Movie" because that is a better description of this epic-less piece of garbage.
12 Boston Globe
The willful sloppiness and retrograde gags make Epic Movie, which was not shown to critics, an inevitable byproduct of our Internet video era. It seems downloaded and projected onto the screen, a failing online-film-school project paid for and put out by a Hollywood movie studio. That said, very little on YouTube is this unentertaining.
12 New York Post
This spoof of "The Da Vinci Code," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Harry Potter," "The Chronicles of Narnia" and other recent blockbusters piles up sex gags, toilet gags and make-you-gag gags.
0 San Francisco Chronicle
Only a complete idiot could think Epic Movie is remotely funny.
0 Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
I've rarely seen a movie as hostile as this one, both to its audience and to its protagonists, and I don't think I realized before just how mean-spirited comedy can get (and I was raised on the Three Stooges).
0 The Onion (A.V. Club)
It's an ersatz comedy filled with unconvincing celebrity look-alikes and tone-deaf parodies. Only the desperation and cynicism feel authentic.

CLOSE THIS WINDOW

©2009 CNET Networks Inc. All rights reserved.