I'll concede that humor is a hard thing to define. Elements of comedy like timing, exaggeration, and relatable experiences tend to only be broken down by very unfunny people and online humorists with too much free time. But there's something I believe can be universally agreed upon as the standard of "not funny": a shallow series of stitched together celebrity jokes meant to parody far superior films, spliced together only with random nut-strikes and even shallower references.

This is the phenomenon we are faced with now. I don't know why the people of this country gave the makers of Epic or Date Movie money. They could have bought something more amusing, like a plane ticket to Baghdad or a round of Russian roulette. But then Meet The Spartans came along, and I'd thought we had collectively reached our threshold for stupidity. Yet it hits number one in the box office (above Rambo, of all things) and goes on to collect the dollar of every single-brain-celled dullard in the nation. And in its wake, we receive Superhero Movie. The half-baked spoof machine limps on.

Stop. It. Now.

Every cent recieved for this tripe tells Hollywood that lowest-common-denominator drivel is not only acceptable, but welcomed by drooling masses. When lemmings flood into anything with a fart joke, we can't really complain about nothing decent being in theaters anymore.

Note the fact that I haven't placed blame on the figureheads of this movement, Aaron Seltzer or Jason Friedberg. This is because they have a good racket going. If you idiots are willing to toss them mounds of gold for pumping out bile, then they have every right to exploit you. As long as every inbred Tom, Dick, and dumbass pays for crap, crap is what we are going to get.

And don't give me the tired "it's so bad it's good" excuse. Bad comedy isn't funny. Bad comedy is like watching a drowning kitten try to squirm its way out of a bathtub. Okay, poor metaphor, that has potential for hilarity (depending on how many undiagnosed mental disorders you have). But sitting through failed comedies as intellectually offensive as these is nothing short of tragic.

You are theoretically human beings with intellectual standards. Act like it, and think before you shove ten dollars into the ticket booth.

With Contempt,
"Hyperion".