More thought went into titling this movie than went into scripting it. I picture the latter happening this way: Writer/director Craig Moss (whose previous turd, aptly titled Breaking Wind, spoofed the Twilight franchise with a kindergartener’s wit) writes the names of dozens of currently popular films, TV shows, TV commercials, celebrities and other pop-culture items on pieces of paper. Then he puts them in a paper bag and pulls out about two dozen at random. Moss then shoehorns awful parodies of each in about 80 minutes’ time.

Among his many “targets” are the Subway ad for $5 footlong subs, a dead Steve Jobs and the pottery scene from Ghost. Yes, Ghost, the movie from 1990.

As if you needed to be told, the results are either painfully awful or awfully painful. Also as if you needed to be told, 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — by and large, and in theory — exists to make fun of a batch of recent horror films, primarily of the found-footage nature. But in order to make fun of something, jokes are needed, which Moss forever confuses with his two obsessions: anal and genital activity.

In the latter department — and this list by no means approaches being comprehensive — 30 Nights features:
• a garden gnome being humped;
• a pool heater being penetrated;
• a dog performing fellatio on his owner;
• an infant performing cunnilingus on a teen girl;
• a ghost having sex with the lead actress (Reno 911!: Miami‘s Kathryn Fiore, for whom you will feel great sorrow and embarrassment); and
• every viewer being raped.

“It’s not even funny anymore!” complains a ghost at one point (with a British accent, because accents equal comedy?). He’s right … and also wrong: This movie never was funny to begin with. What Moss makes qualifies as an insult to lowbrow humor. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

I can’t recall an A-list comedy that works so hard at being relentlessly offensive as Movie 43. Hugh Jackman dons not adamantium claws, but neck testicles. Anna Faris radiates not cluelessness, but coprophilia. Terrence Howard discusses not how hard it is for a pimp, but how long be the black man’s dick.

For a slight majority of the running time, however, Movie 43 forgets to attach jokes to those shocks.

A compilation of shorts bearing no connection to one another other than earning that R rating and pushing it as close to NC-17 as it can get, the film was long-delayed and then ignored. For all its many faults, it’s still watchable.

After all, where else can you see so many Oscar winners and nominees do things that would leave older members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences aghast? Things like:
• Kate Winslet with soup-drenched nuts pressed against her face?
• Naomi Watts making a move on her teenaged son?
• and certainly taking the cake — or avocado, as the case may be — Halle Berry mixing guacamole with her right breast?

In delivering sketch after sketch, Movie 43 is structured like Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women on the Women, with one big difference: Not counting three commercials and a superhero speed-dating bit (stolen by Jason Sudeikis’ horndog Batman), it’s not parodying anything. It’s merely presenting gags (sometimes literal) without context or purpose.

Yet I enjoyed experiencing it; there’s something fascinating about seeing such star-studded material fail, landing with a cruel thud before your eyes. The final sequence, directed by Super‘s James Gunn and involving a profane cartoon cat, makes any pain worth the temporary suffering. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.