The “(Insert word that has increasingly less to do with the movies parodied therein) Movie” franchise is a bizarre thing — cockroach-like in its tenacity. In this case, the long series of strung-together film references is wrapped around the idea of a Cloverfield-style catastrophe affecting the lives of various non-descript people in their mid-20s. This is movie humour at its most referential, with Juno, Enchanted, High School Musical, Alvin And The Chipmunks, cell phone commercials, 10,000 BC, Amy Winehouse, Kim Kardashian (who is actually in the movie), Night at The Museum, Batman and about 300 (no pun intended) other relatively recent entertainment news items.

The fact that the movie is so bad has the most pointed impact on the film’s targets. It’s not dirty enough rise above most gross-out comedies, and it’s not clean enough to satisfy family audiences. It’s just awkward when a movie attempts to parody other comedies with shabby impersonations, only to remind the viewer of what it was like to actually laugh during, say, Superbad — the “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” offshoot that closes the piece makes the original seem like Annie Hall in comparison. Iron Man was funnier than this.

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