Welcome to Rearview Mirror, a monthly column in which I re-view and then re-review a movie I have already seen under the new (and improved?) critical lens of 2023. I’m so happy you’re here.
A masterpiece of the absurd. We can only know where the line is by crossing it, and Movie 43 reveals our society’s taboos by shoving them in our faces, daring us to look away, and then inviting us to ask why we have not. For who is the greater pervert, the exhibitionist or the audience? This is “The Aristocrats” for the modern era, Portnoy’s Complaint and Borat and Saw all in one. Well, not quite!
Movie 43, a collection of comedic vignettes tied together by Dennis Quaid pitching movie ideas to Greg Kinnear, came out 10 years ago and currently holds a 4 percent Critic Rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Audience Score is a much more generous 24 percent. It was put together by the Farrelly brothers and their producer, Charles B. Wessler, who, according to Wikipedia, PA’d for George Lucas on Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Not strictly relevant, but I found it interesting.
It’s not very funny. It’s white guys acting out Brett Ratner’s locker room gags. The first vignette is the grossest, starring Kate Winslet as a woman on a date with Hugh Jackman, whose scrotum is on his neck. The balls get dangled in olive oil and rest on a baby’s head…when I first watched it however many years ago (I think I was in an Emma Stone Completist mood?), I was disgusted. But now—TMI incoming—I’ve had more experience with actual nards, which I think is one reason I was 20 percent less uncomfortable this time around (double negative? I won’t not go there!). If you can make it through that segment, the rest probably won’t phase you, save perhaps Chloë Grace Moretz menstruating all over her crush’s house, a gag that worked much better in Superbad.
Still, I…didn’t hate it? It’s just mediocre sketches, and I’ve seen enough truly bad sketches to build up quite the tolerance. It’s offensive in a lazy way, provocative if you’re a sheltered suburban kid. It’s cut scenes from American Pie, but Jennifer Coolidge isn’t there to elevate it. But the cast is…stacked?
It’s offensive in a lazy way, provocative if you’re a sheltered suburban kid. It’s cut scenes from American Pie, but Jennifer Coolidge isn’t there to elevate it. But the cast is…stacked?
This is the great mystery of Movie 43: How the hell did they get all these people to sign up? I’d speculate it was like a day of filming and essentially a favor to producers, but it’s still bizarre. Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott, sure. Quaid and Kinnear, OK. Winslet and Jackman? Emma Stone? Griffin Dunne directing? Halle Berry, you’re better than this! (Her I Think You Should Leave–ish section with Stephen Merchant is actually my favorite part, tied with Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, and Jeremy Allen White in a genuinely solid premise. “You dropped your books, fuckface” got a chuckle outta this girl.)
Ultimately, this is what works against the movie the most. Fill the cast with goofy unknowns, B-level SNL alums, or Adam Sandler’s day players and you’ve got yourself, I dunno, a harmless stoner flick? The Superhero Speed-Dating is knockoff CollegeHumor, but whatever. Add a few more original characters and you could pass this off as a MADtv project, if not a National Lampoon. But when a movie includes a serious actor, even in a joke of a role, it’s asking on some level to be taken seriously as a movie. Hence the 4 percent.
Add a few more original characters and you could pass this off as a MADtv project, if not a National Lampoon. But when a movie includes a serious actor, even in a joke of a role, it’s asking on some level to be taken seriously as a movie.
When you’ve got Richard Gere trying to understand why users keep trying to have sex with an iPod shaped like a naked woman (funny to me!) in the same movie as Chris Pratt trying to dump out on Anna Faris (comedy is subjective…), one scene inevitably sticks in the mind longer than the other. The final bit—Terrence Howard explaining to his basketball team that they’re going to beat the white kids because they’re Black and that’s their entire strategy—could have been on Key & Peele. The post-credits scene about a horny animated cat…not so much!
As it stands, this mostly forgotten movie is a strange line on the IMDbs of a dozen respected stars, and if you’re thinking of renting it, it’s my duty to caution against that in favor of most other comedies. But maybe it meant something to the Farrelly Brothers. They’ve always embraced the “low,” but I wonder if the 4 percent hurt. The next year, they put out the Dumb & Dumber sequel, which was assuredly already in the works when Movie 43 dropped. But after that, they took a four-year break, and then Peter returned to…win Best Picture with Green Book. Something to prove? The greatest comeback story in tinseltown? A glitch in the matrix? Moonlight backlash? A conspiracy? I still don’t know.
In Movie 43, Hollywood is run not by executives but by crazy, gun-toting dreamers willing to kidnap producers to get their scripts produced. Maybe it’s got subtext after all. FL
