With sales of Beaver Bras sagging, ad man Albert Zack (Chris Lemmon, Wishmaster) is tasked with front-loading the next campaign with five famous curvaceous ladies to model the goods: a chart-topping singer, a Swiss countess, an Olympic wrestler, a sex-kitten actress and the daughter of the President of the United States. With that mission set, the meat of C.O.D. is watching Zack humiliate himself to make contact for contracts by donning a variety of disguises, because what else screams “zany”?

For example, the actress (Corinne Alphen, Amazon Women on the Moon) is shooting a Doctor Butcher M.D.-style horror film, so Zack dresses as a zombie to crash the set. For the singer (Marilyn Joi, Black Samurai), he dons his discotheque best. For the POTUS offspring, it’s cringingly offensive Fu Manchu garb. Hey, it was the ’80s.

One of pornographer Chuck Vincent’s earliest efforts to go legit, the PG-rated C.O.D. plays remarkably tame, even with its big-busted premise. Nudity is light enough to be near-nonexistent, and the most risqué gag requires literacy; as Zack — in a Santa Claus outfit — realizes he’s followed the countess (Carole Davis, Piranha II: The Spawning) to a Madison Cawthorn-style orgy, she chases him around a room lit with Christmas lights and a neon sign reading “THE FUCK IS ON.”

If you didn’t already know C.O.D.’s leading man fell from the same Lemmon tree as his legendary father, nothing here would shed that light. But let’s give the lesser Lemmon this: As the straight man opposite five shapely women, he’s easily likable, whereas had he played it any differently, he’d be alienating. Almost all the laughs come from first-timer Teresa Ganzel (The Toy), genuinely funny as the prez’s daughter. If she didn’t improvise much of her scene after ditching Secret Service, color me amazed. Either way, one wishes her co-stars — not to mention her writer/director — worked as hard. —Rod Lott

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Except for one performer, National Lampoon’s Another Dirty Movie represents a career low for all involved. Considering top-billed Jonathan Silverman starred in Caddyshack II, that’s really saying something, but here he inflates a used condom with his mouth and even pulls back the sides of his eyes to mimic an Asian. For veteran comedian Robert Klein, it’s the shame of having to say lines like, “Corn?!? In my poop?!? What are these nibblets?!?”

The exception is soap-opera actress Maeve Quinlan, but only because she received unsimulated oral sex for Larry Clark’s probing camera in Ken Park. So this might be one stool step up from that.

Like 2011’s first Dirty Movie (which I actually find amusing), this semi-sequel shoots filmed skits ‘n’ bits of R- and X-rated jokes as rapidly as Will Smith’s ball machine in King Richard. Only the in-between window dressing has changed, now concerning horny students Mason (Nolan Gerard Funk, The Long Night) and Patrick (Jon Klaft, co-writer with Alan Donnes), who need to make a movie — any movie — lickety-split so they can get crazy-laid. Turning to Patrick’s porno-producing uncle (Silverman), they write, cast and shoot their epic dirty-joke picture in what appears to be the same day.

From twin belly dancers to topless blondes, the onscreen gag tellers deliver such old chestnuts as “What kind of bees produce milk? Boo-bees.” Waka-waka-hey! I’d say Klaft and Donnes stole their script from a 12-year-old boy, but that would be unfair. (He couldn’t have been more than 8, maybe 9, tops.)

Other would-be comics slinging vile, tasteless (and worse, witless) wisecracks on Blacks, the Holocaust and such targets include hillbillies, Nazis, Klansmen, Middle Eastern terrorists, a sex-crazed doctor and a child actor whose parents should know better. Outside of these super-short segments, Silverman — who, mind you, also chose to direct this — cajoles celebrity pals Jason Alexander, David Schwimmer, Bob Saget and Jeff Ross into sad cameos.

So much of Another Dirty Movie reeks of desperation. The bar scenes look to be lensed in a storage unit. Only if Mel Brooks were a robot who got stuck in a loop would you hear the word “schtup” repeated more. Some actors literally turn to face the camera at punchline, because how else would the viewer know when to laugh? (You won’t.) The screenplay presumes to have its finger on the pulse of American culture by queuing up a bit about Rain Man — yes, Rain Man, as in from 1988! Prepare for a linguistic knee-slapper of the highest order as someone mishears “kitty porn” as “kiddie porn” — oh, the misunderstandings that follow!

The credits’ typeface may be appropriately bubbly to match the iconic National Lampoon logo, but Another Dirty Movie can’t approach even the least ticklish rib of Bluto or Cousin Eddie. —Rod Lott

Abandon hope, all ye who enter Mother Schmuckers, Belgium’s answer to Dumb and Dumber. The leads, played by filmmaking brothers Lenny and Harpo Guit, are even the human equivalent of Lloyd Christmas’ “most annoying sound in the world.”

As perpetually hungry, poverty-stricken brothers Issachar (who looks like Emo Philips had sex with Elijah Wood) and Zabulon (who doesn’t), the Guits lose their mother’s beloved dog, January Jack. That’s it for a story; the boys just run around town, finding shenanigans at every turn: playing with a loaded gun, eating a maggot-ridden burger, dancing in a music video. In the highlight, as it were,
Issachar uses unconvincing carpet scraps to pass for a dog to gain access into a club — uh-oh, it’s a bestiality club, yuk yuk!

Mother Schmuckers shows its stripes in the opening scene, where Issachar and Zabulon cook poop. When executed well, gross-out comedy can garner laughs so large, they strain your stomach muscles. That’s not the case here; the Guits present the situation without real jokes attached. This is not a case of European humor failing to translate to this stupid American’s brain or offending my delicate sensibilities, as Denmark’s Klown is as riotous as they come, and France’s recent Mandibles is full of laugh-aloud moments, too.

By contrast, Mother Schmuckers simply is not funny because the Guits don’t push the bits beyond merely presenting them, and that’s not enough. I laughed exactly once, at someone’s apt summation of Issachar: “He looks like a Playmobil.” At least the movie is pretty much over with after 65 minutes — a tiresome stretch in any language for gags this flat and contemptible. Comparisons to John Waters are unfair to John Waters. —Rod Lott

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Ever wanted to see Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara doing Anna Karenina? Don’t answer yet.

Actually, don’t answer at all, because That’s Adequate has just that — and more! — wanted or otherwise. File this project under “otherwise,” because it sat on the shelf for three years, which probably suited many of its cameo players just fine.

Having never quite conquered Hollywood, writer/director Harry Hurwitz (The Projectionist, Safari 3000) uses his penultimate film as a mockumentary to spoof the entire industry. With clips aplenty, penny-pinching producer Max Roebling (Scavenger Hunt’s James Coco, the Kmart Dom DeLuise) reminisces about the six-decade run of his fictional Adequate Pictures. In doing so, Hurwitz gives himself a chance to parody a slew of genres without committing to one.

This includes — take a deep breath — D.W. Griffith epics (but erotic), Shakespearean drama (performed in rabbit costumes) and medical dramas (with an accidental laugh track). The comedies of Charlie Chaplin (albeit one in which the Tramp-esque comic ate his pint-sized sidekick), the Marx Brothers (if they were rapey) and the Three Stooges (but with real-world consequences of violence). Plus African-American musicals, 1940s newsreels, Fleischer cartoons, goona-goona jungle adventures, John Wayne war pics, color-tinted serials, Hitchcockian thrillers, Cold War sci-fi, Star Wars and the follies-style films with a banjo player singing next to a dancing penis. (Those were a thing, right?)

Bits play quickly with jokes rapid-fire, but fast rarely equates to funny. Sometimes a segment feels double the length because not one line lands; ironically, these bits all feature big-name talent, from Bruce Willis and Robert Downey Jr. (presaging the Kid ’n Play hair) to yammering stand-up Richard Lewis as a yammering franchise character named Pimples.

Speaking of stand-up, a mystifying USA for Africa sendup assembles every other comedian of the late 1980s — Rick Overton, Ritch Shydner, Sinbad, Joe Alaskey, Robert Townsend, The Funny Boys — and not an off switch among them — which had to be an on-set nightmare. Don’t even get me started on dialogue built upon such bold concepts as “cut the cheese” and “feeling funny and tingly down by their pee-pees and poo-poos.”

Still, That’s Adequate contains a few inspired sketches, starting with a Western using the corpse of its deceased leading man for reshoots, à la Weekend at Bernie’s. Meanwhile, Young Adolf gives the future führer Hitler a George Washington-style biopic, right down to lying to his father about a chopped-down tree: “Father, I cannot tell a lie. The Jews did it.” Guilt-free hilarity arrives with an inspired montage of the movies of infant star Baby Elroy (“a has-been at 2″), lobbing grenades in Baby Elroy Goes to War and encountering a toddler Karloff in Baby Elroy Meets Baby Frankenstein.

Tony Randall hosts. Established filmmakers Martha Coolidge and Marshall Brickman appear as themselves, which may be the weirdest thing of all — and mind you, this is a movie in which The Partridge Family member Susan Dey goes down on a guy as she sings to him.

And that’s That’s Adequate. Only the Danny DeVito/Martin Lawrence vehicle What’s the Worst That Could Happen? bests it in the nonexistent race for the movie whose title best doubles as a review. —Rod Lott

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In the midst of a freebase freakout, famed comedian Jo Jo (Richard Pryor) blows up his living room, as you typically do. Somehow, he’s taken to the hospital where, as he lays dying, his astral form steps out of his dying body and he wanders naked through the parking lot; good thing a limo is there to pick him up and, I suppose, clothe him.

Over the next 90 minutes, we’re taken through Jo Jo’s (nonfictional) life, starting as a child growing up in a whorehouse, to a teenager leaving home to work in a comedy club. By this point, it’s easy to see that Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling is semi-autobiographical, as then we’re treated to the drink, the drugs and the women plaguing and, ultimately, destroying Jo Jo’s (and Pryor’s) life.

While this would be a disastrous hour-and-a-half funeral dirge for many, Pryor makes sure there are just as many laughs as there are tears — a real feat, especially given the sensitive subject matter. Towing the dreamlike line between real life and real fantasy, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling was a remarkably entertaining way for Pryor to tell his tale of comedic woe, especially in the wake of his self-immolation.

The lone film directed by Pryor, from a screenplay co-written with comedian Paul Mooney, it’s a lost cult classic that will probably never receive the timely due it truly deserves; as a matter of fact, I had to pick up Time-Life’s Ultimate Richard Pryor Collection to find a good copy of it. To be fair, I was going to get that anyway. —Louis Fowler

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