US moviegoers grit their teeth for 9/11: the comedies

[bijou]

The Independent is the most left wing of the large circulation newspapers here, so the piece is introduced with some lefty grandstanding, the meat of the article is below.

...Take Postal, a crass comedy of al-Qa'ida manners directed by Uwe Boll, a man frequently honoured with the label "worst film-maker alive". The film starts with two September 11 hijackers arguing about the exact number of virgins awaiting them as martyrs in paradise. They raise Osama bin Laden himself on their cellphone and, when he tells them they can expect no more than 20 virgins, they decide to change course and head to the Bahamas.

Funny? Maybe not. But it is more or less guaranteed to cause enough offence to spill days' or weeks' worth of ink in the gossip press and on cable news. Bin Laden is played by Larry Thomas, who was the infamous "soup Nazi" on Seinfeld. It also features, if you please, "a gang of bosomy commandos who face off against Bin Laden and the Taliban in an epic battle that will determine the fate of the world."

If that doesn't sound moronic enough, then try Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, latest in a burgeoning film series about two irredeemable potheads and their adventures. It's been widely described as "Cheech and Chong meet the war on terror", and human rights campaigners concerned about everything from suicides to due process at the Guantanamo prison camp are not amused. And then there's Zombie Strippers, which casts the porn actress Jenna Jameson in an explicit caper which begins with the US military reviving dead soldiers to carrying on fighting in Iraq.

More obviously engaging is Morgan Spurlock's follow-up to his hit documentary about fast-food hell, Super Size Me. The new film, out this weekend in the United States, is called Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? and it follows Spurlock on his travels to Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan on the decidedly whimsical trail of America's most wanted man. He doesn't find him, of course, but he speaks to enough ordinary Middle Easterners – everyone from rug salesmen to imams – to demystify both Bin Laden himself and the Middle East as a whole.

Perhaps the most promising of the upcoming crop is War Inc., a zany satire about war profiteering starring and co-written by John Cusack. It's the story of a hit man hired by a company not unlike Halliburton to take over an entire Middle Eastern country.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-moviegoers-grit-their-teeth-for-911-the-comedies-812204.html

I can't imagine anyone finding these particularly funny, it strikes me that they are almost guaranteed to lose money.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Thanks to the Byzantine working of our tax code, Bijou, it's entirely possible the producers not only expect, but desire for them to bomb at the box office.  Sort of like "The Producers," but with the taxpayers holding the bag rather than the backers.

 

[bijou]

Thanks to the Byzantine working of our tax code, Bijou, it's entirely possible the producers not only expect, but desire for them to bomb at the box office.  Sort of like "The Producers," but with the taxpayers holding the bag rather than the backers.

 

If that's the aim then it is a safe bet.  Shame they'll get away with it.