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One out of Five stars
Running time: 100 mins

Disappointing spoof comedy that’s painfully low on laughs, despite the best efforts of its cast.

What’s it all about?
Date Movie attempts to do for romantic comedies what Scary Movie did for the teen horror genre, throwing in references to everything from When Harry Met Sally to Meet the Fockers. It stars Alyson Hannigan as overweight romantic Julia Jones, who meets the man of her dreams in foppish Grant Fockyerdodder (Adam Campbell).

However, before she can have her Big Fat African-American-Indian-Jewish Wedding, Julia has to Meet the Parents, negotiate with the Wedding Planner and foil Grant’s sexy best friend Andy’s (Sophie Monk) attempts to sabotage the wedding.

The Good
Alyson Hannigan makes an adorable lead, but Date Movie only succeeds in making you feel sorry for her and wishing that someone would cast her in a proper romcom.

There’s intermittently amusing comic support from Tony Cox, Eddie Griffin (as Julia’s father) and Jennifer Coolidge but the script gives them almost nothing to work with and you sense that they improvised their funny bits.

The Bad
The posters for Date Movie proudly boast that it’s by “two of the six writers of Scary Movie”. Clearly it’s the other four who were the talented ones, because hardly any of the jokes work here and it’s downright painful to watch in places.

Worth Seeing?
In a word, no. Basically, if you’ve seen the trailer then you’ve already seen both the good jokes. It also doesn’t help that every single movie referenced here is funnier than Date Movie. Except The Wedding Planner, obviously.