If Meet The Spartans' position at the top of the box office chart this weekend proves anything—besides the fact that Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer are simultaneously smarter and stupider than all of us—it's that America is in the mood to laugh. Also, America has no sense of humor.
Still, why should Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, and various and sundry Wayans have the market cornered on movies that are little more than a randomly chosen selection of cheap gags, lazy references, pratfalls, and gay jokes strung together by Carmen Electra smiles? Think about all the pop culture references sitting in your brain right now gathering dust. According to the Friedberg/Seltzer/Wayans farting-is-the-same-thing-as-writing model, those references are jokes, and about twenty of them collected in one place is a movie that makes $19 million opening weekend. Easy, right? We can all do this.
That's why today I started to write my own Epic Scary Date Spartans Movie. It's called Now That's What I Call Movie, Vol. 1, and it's going to take all the pop cultural references you thought you knew and show them to you again, except this time they'll be "jokes." Sample scenes are below. (Apologies to Friedberg & Seltzer if some of these ideas overlap with Meet The Spartans. Chalk it up to parallel non-thinking.)
Now That's What I Call Movie, Vol. 1 Ideas:
—Atonement/Transformers spoof: Keira Knightly falls in love with an Autobot. When they are separated, she whispers, "I love you" in his giant metallic ear as the music swells.
—Something with a midget that looks like Donald Trump
—Javier Bardem's character in No Country For Old Men kills people with farts instead of with a pneumatic air gun.
—An American Gladiator (probably Wolf) aims for McLovin, but accidentally kicks Juno in the stomach. A watermelon falls out from underneath her shirt. She's been faking the pregnancy! Wolf and Juno exchange looks/grunts. Juno takes off and Wolf chases after her as she yells, "Honest to blog?"
—Big Bird hits Flava Flav on the head. Flava Flav falls down onto an oversized clock.
—Cousin It is the new receptionist at The Office. He flirts with Jim through coy meeps and hair shakes.
—The Hills/Norbit spoof: Whitney & LC are having lunch. "I just got a text from Norbit," LC says. [30 second pause] "W. T. F?" Whitney says. The girls stare at each other and say nothing for a minute while the strains of Mandy Moore's cover of "Umbrella" fill the space. Then, out of nowhere, fat-suited Eddie Murphy leaps over the table and tackles LC screaming, "Aw, hell no!"
—Britney Spears is an Other on Lost ("This is my island, y'all."), Beowulf ("I am beowulf, y'all!"), or both.
—Dane Cook trips over Jessica Simpson and lands on his hand. He recovers, smiles, and holds up his mangled limb triumphantly, but his fingers hang flaccid and useless. Horror floods his face as he yells, "You broke my SuperFinger! You broke my SuperFinger!"
—Carmen Electra fall down go boom.
—Carrot Top and the Fat Guy From Borat totally make out.