#76 The Underground Comedy Movie (Wes)

The Underground Comedy Movie

When you get a DVD and it firstly claims that that the movie is guaranteed to offend and secondly that it follows in the traditions of The Kentucky Fried Movie, then you may start to question why this movie has made our 100 bad movies list. I know I did. Then I watched it.

This is the part where I’d usually give you a synopsis of the plot of the movie, but this is actually really hard to do with The Underground Comedy Movie, as there is no plot. It’s merely a collection of skits each trying to offend or parody various movies/situations. There’s a Godfather parody (The Godmother), a series of superhero sketches (with Batman – a man who carries a baseball bat and the criminal Rhymer and then later with Dickman), a series of “Things You Never See”, a bag lady beauty pageant (co-hosted by Slash), the gay virgin (Michael Clarke Duncan), a porn review show and lots of other immediately forgettable sketches.

Directed, written and starring Vince Offer, this movie misses the point in the most spectacular fashion. I get the feeling that he called it The Underground Comedy Movie, just so that people realised that it was supposed to be a comedy. It actually starts off with a few laughs, but it loses its way faster than the film students in The Blair Witch Project.

The first proper sketch, the Batman/Rhymer skit, is actually quite funny in a juvenile way. The Rhymer robs a sperm bank (they have no cash, so he steals the sperm), and soon runs into Batman. He throws the sperm into an old lady’s shopping cart and Batman beats her up instead. Not exactly highbrow material, but it provides a few laughs. Unfortunately they’re the only laughs you get (except for one porn stars name – Arnold Swollenpecker). Everything else in this movie is so poorly written that you start to believe there wasn’t actually a script involved. Rather that Vince Offer just plied the cast with alcohol and told them just to improvise.

The scenes of  “Things You’ll Never See” are just abysmal, and seem like filler of the worst kind. Two supermodels sitting on toilets next to each other taking a dump really aren’t that funny. It’s true that you’re never likely to see this, but then again, I don’t actively go out of my way to watch anyone curling one out, so that's hardly a surprise. Vince Offer though seems to think this moment is hilarious and slots in these farting and straining ladies at regular intervals.

In theory this movie has a few good ideas, which maybe would work well in a TV sketch show, but they really need to be developed by people with an actual talent for comedy. Unfortunately Vince Offer seems to make the very basic error of thinking that being offensive for the sake of it is funny. Being deliberately offensive is one of the easiest things in the world to do, doing it without coming across as just being a nasty, racist, homophobic piece of trash isn’t. Other filmmakers who do this well understand exactly how far you can push things with regards to gross out humour or stereotyping (eg Matt Stone and Trey Parker or The Farrelly Brothers), Offer has no idea how to handle this. His jokes all come across as nothing more than playground level toilet humour. Even the gay steward in Soul Plane was done with more taste and humour, and that’s something I never thought I’d be typing. 

When I learnt that this movie spun out of a Public Access TV show then it all started to make a little more sense. It’s like an amateur Saturday Night Live, but with absolutely none of the humour (basically like a post mid-90s Saturday Night Live). The fact that they have the audacity to compare this film to The Kentucky Fried Movie is just insulting. Yes it has the same basic premise, but The Kentucky Fried Movie was made by people with actual talent, who went on to make some of the funniest movies ever. Vince Offer has gone on to make a sequel to this movie (An InAPPropriate Comedy – which somehow stars Adrien Brody).

The only good thing I can actually say about this movie is that it has a decent soundtrack. Featuring songs from NOFX, Guttermouth and Snuff, it was the only thing that stopped me from throwing my Macbook through a window to escape this pile of turgid crap.

If you want to watch something offensive then I really suggest that you stick on South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut or watch the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you really want to be completely offended then maybe you should just pick a random video on YouTube and read the comments underneath. Just don't waste your time watching this. At this point I feel I can actually help Vince Offer with an idea for his next sequel, "Things You'll Never See": Me watching this pile of steaming crap again.