The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Comedy in which reverend Rowan Atkinson’s home is invaded by murderous nanny Maggie Smith. A promisingly black idea ends up being delivered as a quaintly mumsy British rural comedy
The big-budget film version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide phenomenon is a disaster that fumbles Douglas Adams’s absurdist wit and blows everything up with big-budget effects and a pitch to American audiences
Witty and enormously clever Japanese time travel film. This readily homages Back to the Future but has a great deal of original fun of its own creating a series of hilarious temporal conundrums. One of the most entertaining films I have seen in some time
Film spinoff from the popular British comedy series sees the familiar characters entering the real world to meet their creators and deal with the cancellation of the show
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
Oddball German comedy in which a toy table footballer magically comes to life and becomes a star soccer player
A sequel to the teen spy comedy. This moves the action to England but amplifies everything else into inanely loud and noisy slapstick action
A warm parody/tribute to the George Romero zombie films that saw the emergence of Simon Pegg as a star. It also saw the zombie film move towards a more comedic emphasis, although few subsequent entries come with such good-natured humour
Essentially a rehash of Big in which a tormented teen wishes she was thirty and wakes up as Jennifer Garner. Amiably average without ever finding the wistful charms that Big had
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone conduct an hilarious parody of Gerry Anderson via real world politics and a very adult sense of humour
One of a spate of films of the 90s/00s that adapted animated tv series in live-action – in this case Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Here all we get is the animated characters emerging into the real world for slapstick inanity
Stephen Chow excels himself in this comic take on the martial arts film. Sensational over-the-top fight sequences sit alongside Chow’s frequently sidesplitting comic hand.
Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jackie Chan. One of Chan’s biggest flops, an overblown turkey packed with celebrity cameos and replacing Verne’s adventure with incredibly unfunny slapstick
An hilarious mockumentary directed by Mark Hamill set at the San Diego Comic Con, this spoofs various aspects of comic-book fandom and includes assorted celebrities sending themselves up
Sequel to the live-action Scooby-Doo, this is at least a better film than its predecessor, being more polished in its slapstick and effects but still has no more ambition beyond being a silly no-brain film
An extremely witty parody of Charlie’s Angels (that also tapps the whole Austin Powers spy spoof fad). This amusingly rewrites the tv show in terms of lesbian attraction
The sort of film that might make Troma radioactive green with envy they didn’t make it concerning a giant rampaging ass. Mind-boggling and willing to be stupid and in frequent bad taste
Lightweight film based around the Disney theme park attraction that becomes a Eddie Murphy comedy where he and his family enter into a big old mansion that proves to be haunted
Spy movie parody with Rowan Atkinson as an inept agent who is constantly tripping over his own feet. It is Austin Powers reconceived as a Mr Bean film but offering little that is funny.
Comedy directed by Chris Matheson, co-writer of the Bill and Ted films, about two not very bright alien invaders. Imagine Dumb and Dumber meets Earth Girls Are Easy. A film that is wilfully silly
Enjoyable remake of the 1970s Disney comedy about a mother and daughter who swap bodies. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan nail the swapped roles to perfection
Jon Favreau directed Christmas film premised entirely around the premise of 6’3″ Will Ferrell as an ungainly Christmas elf. The film works entirely to the extent one has a tolerance for Ferrell’s screen presence.
David Zucker takes over the reins of the franchise from the Wayans Brothers. With a lack of big scary movies in 2002 to parody, the film takes a scattershot approach parodying any film at all, with the usual inanity
Comedy in which God appears to Jim Carrey and grants him His powers for one week. Expectedly the film is of zero theological depth and all about Carrey going completely over-the-top
Video-released sequel to the live-action Matthew Broderick film, this is played as much more of a cartoon and amped to a maximum level of slapstick inanity
Another in the spy parodies that emerged following Austin Powers. Frankie Muniz is a high school teenager who is recruited as a spy. a mildly amusing set-up that is delivered with surprisingly little wit
Pitched as a parody of the martial arts moves in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In actuality, a witless and unfunny comedy that only takes a 1970s martial arts film and dubs it over with a laughtrack
Third of the Austin Powers films and the point where the amusements of the other films topples over into a pandering indulgence to Mike Myers’ mugging, which is allowed to overtake the whole show
Painfully unfunny big screen revival of the 1960s tv series, which on screen has been reduced to a series of plotless gags that involve Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson doing nothing except bickering with each other
Conceived in the aftermath of the Austin Powers films, this is a rather funny parody of the Blaxploitation film from Spike Lee’s cousin Malcolm D. Lee
Live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Huge flop comedy for Eddie Murphy in which he plays a nightclub owner on The Moon. There is an almost good SF film hiding inside and depiction of a surprisingly detailed Lunar culture but the unnfunny comedy elements kill it
Hardly anyone remembers Dana Carvey, Mike Myers’ co-star in Wayne’s World. This was Carvey’s attempt to copy the Austin Powers films and is regarded as a bad movie
Amiably good natured if unchallenging comedy where Dawn French engages in a relationship with an alien visitor
Comedy released under the National Lampoon banner in which a nerdy student accidentally creates a clone of his object of desire. This feels like a mash-up between Weird Science or Multiplicity and one of the frat rat comedies inspired by National Lampoon’s Animal House
Adam Sandler produced film that is a variant on the bodyswap standard in which Rob Schneider and Rachel McAdams switch bodies. Much crass humour ensues in between a good-naturedly all-inclusive message
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
Part of the sad depths that Jackie Chan’s career sank to after he was discovered by Hollywood. This is a spy film parody where he is a cabbie who places on a hi-tech tuxedo that turns him into a super-agent
A flop comedy based on a Dave Barry novel about various characters trying to obtain a nuclear weapon. Despite a reasonable name cast, this becomes slapstick inanity in director Barry Sonnenfeld’s hands
Sequel that turns a witty original into overblown slapstick that never consists of anything more than absurd gags with aliens and technology popping up from behind everyday objects
A sequel to the Eddie Murphy Dr Dolittle remake. This is still an insult to the original stories but proves a more amiable comedy under director Steve Carr
Frenetic Hong Kong comedy about fairy enchantments involving all the cast undergoing gender reversals
An uncredited adaptation of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Martin Lawrence as a hip modern African-American man thrown back to Mediaeval times
Remake of Heaven Can Wait/Here Comes Mr Jordan as a vehicle for comedian Chris Rock where the heavenly body mix-up now becomes about a black man ending up in a white man’s body
Ivan Reitman comedy that is essentially a rehash of his earlier hit Ghostbusters but where instead of ghosts he has a team investigating rapidly alien lifeforms at a meteor crash site
Irish-made comedy with Robbie Coltrane who has a Aborigine head in a jar that can predict horse races
The US remake of the French time travel comedy Les Visiteurs. With a script by John Hughes, this imports the original film’s stars but misses its comedy charms by a mile
Lightweight and likeable Meg Ryan romcom in which she is romanced by a chivalrous and perfectly mannered Hugh Jackman travelled through time from the 19th Century
The second film outing of US horror hostess Elvira, which is construed as a parody/homage to the Roger Corman-Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films. Everything is overrun with Elvira’s cheesy puns and double entendres
Farrelly Brothers comedy where Jack Black is hypnotised by Tony Robbins and 300 pound Gwyneth Paltrow as beautiful
The first of the Scary Movie sequels where the Wayans Brothers extend the gag beyond the slasher movie to take on the ghost story and exorcism film while aiming squarely for Lowest Common Denominator in sophomoric humour
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he parodies The Matrix et al with Buddhist monks using flying martial arts moves to aid a failing soccer team
Australian comedy where Billy Connolly sues God for all the supposed Acts of Gods on insurance forms
One-gag comedy in which Rob Schneider receives transplants of various animal parts and subsequently ends up exhibiting animal behaviours – usually at the most inopportune time
Film based on a Saturday Night Life sketch with Lance Crouther as a superhero who speaks a nonsense babble
Comedy where a nerdy teen signs a diabolical pact that offers cool and the girl of his dreams
The third and final film to date directed, written by and starring Yahoo Serious where he plays an accident prone man obsessed with alien life
Sequel to the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor. That film’s tour-de-force was a scene with Murphy playing all the members of his family. Here the family have been brought to the fore. Murphy’s performance and the effects are expectedly great but the plot is all over the place
A sex-changed version of My Stepmother is an Alien in which Garry Shandling is an alien come to Earth to breed with a woman. Despite being directed by Mike Nichols this is as lame as it sounds and stumbles through tired routines that were not even funny the first time around
Supposedly an Airplane-styled movie parody that takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey (although this soon gets forgotten), this is one of the most painfully unfunny films ever made
Hong Kong comedy with a police station under siege from zombies. The emphasis is more on comedy than the horror element
A bizarrely surreal, anything goes comedy that feels like Repo Man as though directed by the Farrelly Brothers after they had inhaled a few bongs
US remake of the British comedy where Brendan Fraser is a schmuck who sells his soul to The Devil who then twists around the wording of each wish. The bite of the original is lacking in a comedy that has to spell everything out for the audience.
The Adam Sandler comedy and its pitch to the most vulgar common denominator is an acquired taste. This not very funny effort casts Sandler as The Devil’s Son
The first in a popular series of comedies, this spoofs the recent hits of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer in the most vulgar and witless way possible
The first of the live-action films based on the famous comic-books set during the Roman period, starring Gerard Depardieu who seems born to play the part of Obelix
A live-action adaptation of the popular animated series, one of the spate of such films that came out after the live-action The Flintstones. Amiably silly and frequently slapstick fun that proves to be exactly what one expects of it
Likeably eccentric Coming of Age story set in England during the 1970s at the height of the punk era where, among the usual other very funny travails, the protagonist’s father starts demonstrating unusual psychic abilities
Disappointing adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel from Adam Rudolph that substitutes Vonnegut’s satire for clumsy, ham-fisted farce that never gives us any clear idea what it is satirising
A comedy with the amusing premise where Brendan Fraser is raised in a nuclear fallout shelter since the Cuban Missile Crisis and emerges into the present for the first time, mistaking it for a post-apocalyptic world
A superhero parody about a group of reject superheroes with useless powers. Despite moments of amusement, this fails to quite come off
There is an appealingly satiric concept here – a parody of a nature documentary looking at human mating rituals from an alien perspective where everything is constantly being misinterpreted in terms of an animal behaviour – but what emerges is mostly a one-gag film
An extremely funny parody of Star Trek that sends up both the show, the actors and the fandom. A very witty and knowing script that has definitely been written by fans
Kevin Smith bends his individualistic sense of humour towards making a film about Catholicism. Smith’s irreverent humour caused controversy when the film came out, although this is also an interesting and thoughtful work
The second of the Austin Powers films is less sharp in its parody of the James Bond film and more focused on a series of broad scatological gags. Mike Myers owns the show in a trio of entertainingly gregarious performances
Live-action film adaptation of the old animated tv show with Brendan Fraser in the title role, this drowns in excruciating slapstick and one-dimensional pantomime caricatures
The third and one of the better of the generally insipid Muppet movies produced following Jim Henson’s death. This tells the story of Gonzo’s origins as an alien where the film borrows spoofs the then-popularity of tv’s The X Files
Incredibly unfunny comedy in which a teenager sells his soul to the Devil. As The Devil, Kevin Pollak lets all stop loose in a mind-bogglingly over-the-top performance
The big screen remake of the 1960s Western/spy mashup tv series is transformed into an overblown and painfully unfunny Will Smith vehicle that loudly signals it is taking none of itself seriously
Bizarre effort in which actors play Laurel and Hardy who are engaged in a comedic caper against a mummy. The film is all excruciating knockabout slapstick
Albert Brooks film with Sharon Stone as a Greek muse. This suggests a Woody Allen whimsy crossed with something of Robert Altman’s The Player and its satire on Hollywood with real-life celebrities playing themselves
Big screen remake of the 1960s sitcom about a wacky alien visitor that promptly gets buried under frenetic slapstick and cheap CGI gags
Canadian-made parody of a cheesy 1950s SF film that emerges more wittily amusingly than most Deliberately Bad SF Films
A modernised version of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Whoopi Goldberg as a physicist who time travels back to Camelot
Complete and utter bastardisation of Hugh Lofting’s charming Doctor Dolittle stories, which are turned into a modern comedy with Eddie Murphy and talking animals doing lots of pee and poop jokes
Chick Flick with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as two sisters from a family of witches. The film never really settles on a consistent tone between comedy, thriller or romance and veers all over the place
Quirkily appealing Canadian fish out of water comedy where John the Baptist is sent to present-day Newfoundland to prevent the End of the World
The Farrelly Brothers have become known for their crude and rude humour but this stalker comedy is one they hit with all barrels firing and has become regarded as a modern comedy classuc
Comedy vehicle for Marlon Wayans in which he becomes a test subject for a sense-heightening drug. Marlon’s natural comic energy far exceeds the slightness of the premise
Spanish comedy produced to celebrate the turn of the millennium in which the fates of several people wind together on the eve of the end of the century
The big screen Addams Family films ended with the death of Raul Julia. Subsequently the rights were sold to Saban Entertainment who made this cheap, terrible direct-to-video film with a new cast
An excruciatingly unfunny spoof of Men in Black that was shoved out using the name of National Lampoon magazine. A painful viewing experience.
The first of Mike Myers’ Austin Powers films is at times extremely silly and scatological but does offer a knowing and witty parody of the James Bond films. The result became a cult phenomenon
Woody Allen film in which he plays a writer and the film drifts in and out of a series of vignettes and stories he has written, including several fantastic interludes, with highly amusing effect
Danny Boyle eccentricity with Ewan McGregor as an inept kidnapper and Cameron Diaz as his more astute abductee. A head-scratching comedy that also throws gun-toting angels into the mix
A film with a children’s movie premise – an amoral lawyer is forced to be honest for a day when his kid makes a wish – is over-taken by the rafter-rattling excesses of Jim Carrey in full OTT mode
Likeable live-action adaptation of the animated series, which was construed as a parody of Tarzan. The sight gags work well and the creature effects are accomplished
A huge box-office hit in its day, this comedy turns UFO coverup conspiracy of
Remake of Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor where the charms of the original are buried under an excess of twee – where the professor now gets a cute robot assistant and the flubber becomes sentient and highly imitative
Unfunny comedy in which Harland Williams plays a bumbling idiot who is recruited to take part in a NASA Mars landing mission. Slapstick inanity results.