There’s something remarkably meta about a disaster movie that is a disaster of a movie. While no one would argue that the film is good, the question becomes, is the film the worst that I ever saw? It’s not. I’ve seen some (not many) bad films that’d win the bad movie crown before Disaster Movie from 2008.

The plot for those of us who are adventurous to look for one involves a group of friends at a sweet sixteen party who run across the city to save one of the friend’s girlfriend’s from a comet. There are a few bad dance numbers and more bad jokes than you can handle if you find that sort of thing annoying.

Created and released in a rush, Disaster Movie riffs on ton of movies that were hot IP items in 2008 including Batman, Kung Fu Panda, Hellboy, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus, Alvin and the Chipmunks (they have rabies in the film), Speed Racer, Beowulf, the Incredible Hulk, Enchanted, Amy Winehouse, the Love Doctor, Doctor Phil, Flavor Flav, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Michael Jackson.

In retrospect, considering that Michael Jackson would die a year later, that joke is the most offensive of the group. (Are there any good Michael Jackson jokes? Yes. The one that Robin Williams used to do about how the drugs Michael Jackson used to take to go to sleep were the equivalent of using chemotherapy to cut your hair.) But each unfunny, tired, insipid parody tugs on your nerves until they become one big ball of annoyingness. The jokes aren’t clever and come off like someone who had only a cursory knowledge of what these characters looked like and their major media appearances.

The film has the dubious distinction of being the first film with an acting appearance by Kim Kardashian West. It’s a quick role at the beginning of the film. Nothing to write home about, and there are many more annoying sins committed by the film.

Ultimately, though, the whole thing doesn’t cross into the valley of “so bad, it’s funny” territory that my favorites like “Troll 2” and “The Room” do. This is just slow and muddled and not funny and a waste of your complete time. Am I recommending that you watch this film? No, absolutely no.

Not Bad

Kind of Bad

Pretty Bad

X – Really Bad

Worst Film I’ve Ever Seen

Lesson Learned: This film does something I wish more films did, it makes reference to other works in a non-funny way. This film is a comedy that’s supposed to be a spoof, so that’s a problem. But I wish more people would reference other IP and drag in non-related stuff in films today. For example and I’m not a fan of his, but Woody Allen’s decision to feature famous writers from the early 1920’s in non-leading roles in Midnight in Paris was a stroke of genius. More films should utilize this trick.

Love, if it’s anything, is a polaroid of my mother,

standing at twenty-three besides a chestnut horse,

its head nestled against her shoulder.

She’s looking at something off camera,

like someone is calling her name, like a stranger.

When I was seventeen, she asked me if I had to steal

everything I had to write.

I was silent then, I didn’t know the answer,

but the truth is I probably do.

Like the birds that land on the house, nameless,

Writing like love is like leaving a candle to burn

in a field that someone might never see,

no one cares, none of it matters to anyone but you.

In my dreams last night, I dreamt of a girl

I kissed in high school, in a wooden shack

where the janitor kept brooms,

but I was nothing then, I was afraid to pull her close to me

so we listened to the river running,

and of my father, when his hair was still

a handful of long reeds and he looked at me,

thirty-three years year old, standing in a Toys R Us aisle,

the day my younger sister was born

that I didn’t know who I was any longer.

When I woke, it was the heat of late summer,

there was no light on the wall,

for years when someone asked, I would say I wanted

anyone who did not dream for months

Of the wolves who had eyes that were as black as my mother’s,

but this is my life

and if I had to do it again,

and draw myself from the shadows,

there are worse things that I could be.

The Jazz Singer

Warner Brothers created a film landmark with The Jazz Singer. Released in 1927, the film marked the first “talkie” picture. (Only, contrary to public belief, The Jazz Singer wasn’t really the first. And films did not all turn into talkie after the release of The Jazz Singer.)

The film is a classic, though. You’ve likely seen or heard a reference to The Jazz Singer in other media. For example, I knew Al Jolson’s line “You ain’t nothing yet” because it was referenced by Jamie Sheridan while he was playing Randall Flagg in The Stand miniseries. The film is so popular that in the 1970’s, Neil Diamond even starred in a remake of The Jazz Singer.

As to its actual merits as a film, The Jazz Singer is melodramatic at best. At worst, it’s a pretty racist portrayal of how various ethnicities were viewed in the United States during the early 1900’s. In addition to featuring a performance in blackface, the film also tackles concept of orthodox Judaism.

The story revolves around the son (Al Jolson) of a Jewish cantor. The son performs on vaudeville, which greatly strains the relationship that he has with his father.

May McAvoy plays Jolson’s love interest. She might be the most engaging actor in the film. After The Jazz Singer was released, though, McAvoy mostly disappeared from the stage until her death in the 1980’s. While rumors got started that McAvoy did not have a voice for “talkies”, in reality she had gotten married to a film studio treasurer who wanted her to give up acting.

Despite the film’s outdated social views and considering most of the film’s dialogue is written on black title cards in between scenes, The Jazz Singer surprisingly holds your attention for its hour and a half length. There’s a lovely scene where Jolson sings “Blue Skies”. His voice strains and he overperforms, but it’s a stirring little segment of film nonetheless.

Complete Crap
Few Redeeming Qualities
Mediocre
X – Good
Pretty Darn Good
Incredible

What I Learned: This is an old film adage by now, but Al Jolson’s character was pretty hammy, but I still liked him as a character. Why? Because The Jazz Singer sets you up to root for him. We really just need somebody we can root for in a film. It doesn’t matter if we’d otherwise hate the character.