Movie 43

Director: A group of directors brought together by Peter Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber)
Starring: Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Emma Stone, Halle Berry, Anna Faris, Chloe Moretz, i.e A LOT of people
Certificate: 15
Run-time: 94 minutes 

IN SHORT: Movie 43 is a collection of juvenile, over-long visual jokes that over-stay their welcome.

Sometimes I really hate the cinema choices I make. There I was, with a free afternoon, a Cineworld Unlimited card and endless cinematic marvels within my reach. I could've picked Lincoln, Flight, Hyde Park on Hudson or Movie 43. I weighted up the pro's and con's of each and curiosity ended up winning out, dragging me into the direction of the Movie 43 screening. The zero star review on Roger Ebert's site didn't turn me off from seeing this movie, it actually made me even more intrigued. With so many great actors and actresses, some Oscar-winning, can it really be that bad? Yeah, it can...

None of the cast actively promoted this film, other than a few lazy tweets, which were probably written by some spotty intern. The only person who seems to care about Movie 43 is producer/director Peter Farrelly who put this whole charade together over a period of seven years.  You'd think after three or four years of rejection, he'd realise this was a terribad idea, right?! If you don't know what the film is about, it's essentially Saturday Live - The Movie, but without any wit. It's an anthology of shorts, some relatively funny, most dumb and juvenile. Each short is directed by a different person so it's a real cluster-fuck.

Kate Winslet - I'm not a fan but WTF are you doing in this film?!

It's also worth mentioning that there are different versions of the film. In the UK (the one I saw) the wrap-around story see's a group of teenagers search for a mysterious banned tape named 'Movie 43', which is supposedly the most outrageous video on the internet. The American version see's Dennis Quaid, a screen-writer, pitch various ridiculous short film ideas to film exec Greg Kinnear. Both wrap-around ideas are unexciting but the US 'pitch' concept must be better than the crap UK one, which is badly acted and just flat-out dumb.

The Farrelly brothers have always delivered 'dumb' humour, it's what they built their career on after films like Kingpin and Dumb and Dumber. The difference between those  and Movie 43, an abject and mostly humourless film, is that they had structure, they had a punchline. These films may have featured dumb humour, but it's incredibly hard to get right. Movie 43 relies on visual comedy and for the most part gets it entirely wrong. Seeing Hugh Jackman with balls on his neck, or watching Chloe Moretz have her first period on her boyfriend's sofa is initially rather funny but the sketches never develop past the first initial idea.

Naomi, stop this madness. You aren't going to win that Oscar by starring in crap like this!

These sketches are fine if they're a minute long but they're anywhere from 5-10 mins each so the joke becomes tiresome, desperate and incredibly lame. This film is being sold on how 'offensive' it is but Movie 43 isn't a test of moral fibre, it's a test of patience. The majority of the sketches are really awkward because they beat you over the head with the same joke, there's little creativity or subtlety. If you can sit through the entirety of this film without once rolling your eyes, tutting or checking your watch, you're a stronger person than me, that's for sure.

Movie 43 isn't the worst movie ever made as some have proclaimed. Right now, it is the worst film I've seen in 2013 but it can easily be displaced. Out of the 14 shorts, I found two to be genuinely funny (Machine Kids and Tampax) and two slightly humorous (Home schooled, The Catch). The fact that I found some redemption in Movie 43, saves it from a Cinematic Turd rating (the lowest rating I give). But I urge you to not follow your curiosity like I did. Do not waste money on this film, you will no doubt regret it!