Tresy

Unlike a hostage video, the B99 actors didn't have to resort to blinking in Morse code. Instead they and the writers used the SNL trick of milking laughs out of the scripts' awfulness. "Charles why do you sound like a podcast?" was the funniest line in the episode, because a podcast exactly how the entire episode played. Someone needs to tell the showrunners that the quickest way to kill comedy is to make it serve a political ideology. Otherwise this season will be B99s last.

Two words: Visible Boom Mike. In at least 5 scenes. Porn movies have greater attention to production values than this piece of miserable dreck. Better pacing too. (And yes, that's 3 words. See one of the repeated, lame jokes in the movie.)

Admittedly, the original wasn't all that great. Recall the disgusting Planned Parenthood scene. (Overpopulation? Unwanted pregnancy? Faw! Feminists are simply repressed lesbians. The more rugrats the merrier!). This remake tries to update a reactionary formula with its own 21st Century version of patronizing "family values" and stupid sexism. Now, Dad actually tries his hand at childrearing and fails (mother knows best, of course), while Mom discovers that having a professional life is nothing compared to the joys of families. This is progress? And it's always so gratifying to watch Hollywood celebrities extol simple, honest rural folk whose moral superiority to big-city hypocrites makes one wonder why all of LA doesn't just move to Dubuque en masse.

I guess I should be grateful that this miserable bit of Hollywood insincerity is so ineptly executed. But what's with Steve Martin? In yet another performance that looks phoned in from another planet, in the latest of a string of unfunny comedies dating back to "Mixed Nuts," he practically invites musings such as, how many botox treatments has he undergone? And: is he now the go-to guy for terrible remakes of mediocre "classic" comedies (see the treacly "Father of the Bride")? Oh God: I see that he's up next in a remake of the Pink Panther.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

This film, about a dwindling band of normals seek to survive in a world infested with rage-infected zombies, is well-executed, but can't hold a candle to the real thing. Turn on U.S. talk radio sometime and you'll see what I mean.