l1/2
Starring Jenn Proske, Matt Lanter, Chris Riggi, Ken Jeong and Diedrich Bader.
Directed by Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer.
While I do rank Seltzer/Friedberg as being behind some of the decade's worst movies and killing the parody genre that Leslie Nielsen & David Zucker had mastered, allow me to damn them with faint praise in saying that this is probably their best movie to date.
I credit ripe source material - three Twilight movies - and the central performance of Jenn Proske, who nails all the twitchy, pensive notes of Kristen Stewart in Bella Swan mode.
Here Proske plays Becca Crane (get it?) in the town of Sporks (get it?) who instantly falls for the mysterious Edward Sullen (nudge nudge) while also not catching on to the crush held by Jacob White (poke poke, see what they did there?). The filmmakers get in references to True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Paranormal Activity, Gossip Girl, etc., etc. Not spot-on jokes about them; just references. Friedberg/Seltzer still suffer from what made their other movies suck. Re-enacting or referencing something in recent pop-culture should be the end goal in a spoof. There needs to be attitude with it, a twist, a Reason for a Joke to Be. It should twist a cliche in a way that we didn't realize it was a cliche until they punched through it.
I feel like every time I see one of these, I need to teach them about humor. There are signs here and there that they get it. There were more than a few jokes I predicted right before they happened (I bet Edward's going to ride a segueway... and there it is.) Some of the gags work, or more appropriately, more gags work here than they did in any of their previous efforts. Someday they might be worthy of Scary Movie 5.
But can we please have a moratorium of using the song "It's Raining Men" as a punchline?
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