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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Cinema File #31: "Breaking Wind, Part 1" Review


Okay, I'm officially starting to regret this "straight to DVD schlock" niche I've been building.

Now to be fair, I'm probably not the best guy to review a straight to DVD parody of the second to last Twilight movie, since I haven't actually seen the second to last Twilight movie, or any of them past the first one for that matter. That being said, the producers of Breaking Wind, Part 1 have seen fit to release this one just in time for Breaking Dawn Part 2, so I don't think it really matters that much. Besides, parody movies like this in the Epic Movie mold tend to stick to stuff you'd know, or could figure out, from the trailers anyway. Then again, that presupposes that I'm able to understand anything going on in this movie, let alone discern any logic to it, and really, I can't. I don't think that has anything to do with my at best casual understanding of Twilight, and everything to do with the undeniable shittiness of this movie.

I was initially hesitant to review this, because I didn't think there was a lot I could feasibly say about it other than coming up with different adjectives for "really bad", but then I realized, if I refuse to review it on those grounds, then this movie wins. To be so bad as to literally defy description so that you won't have any context with which to prejudge it might be this movie's only shot at roping in people to watch it. So far this year, my benchmark for shitty movies has been Arachnoquake, the SyFy Channel Original Movie where fucking Neelix from Voyager was the best part. The thing about that movie was, at least there was a best part! Breaking Wind is an inexorable void of suck the likes of which ye have never seen. Concepts like good and bad, best and worst, simply get lost in the mists of time as seconds turn into minutes, then minutes turn into hours, until you realize that its over, and this horrible, horrible thing just actually happened to you.



This is a holocaust of movie. Imagine the worst possible thing you can think of, not just in terms of bad movies, but of anything. Think of your parents dying. Think of all the parents in the world and every dog and cat you've ever had dying in fire right in front of you, begging for your help in their little dog, cat, and parent voices as you sit helpless to save them from the flames. That feeling, that massive emotional punch to the gut, exists. It has been given form, and it is called Breaking Wind, Part 1. This is the movie that the Garbage Pail Kids think is the worst movie ever made. 

I mentioned Epic Movie before, and if you don't know, that is one of a series of recent parody films by writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Even if you haven't seen them, you've probably seen the ads. Darrell Hammond and Carmen Electra are always in them along with half the cast of the last few seasons of Mad TV, and they don't so much parody current movies as much as reference them, and then pause after each reference as if its a joke. More to the point, Friedberg and Seltzer are generally known to most critics as, collectively, The Devil. And yet, I would gladly watch any one or all of their movies at once than see Breaking Wind Part 1 again. I would rather have every Movie Movie on a loop, the only entertainment I am capable of receiving until I die, then watch Breaking Wind, Part 1 again.

You know when you have a really bad movie and you and your friends all get together and watch it for the sole purpose of cracking jokes about it? No? You don't do that? Well congratulations, you're not a hipster douche bag! But for those who are, you'll know that there's always one guy in the group who's not as funny as everyone else. His contributions pretty much always fall flat, and maybe you laugh a few times just to be polite, but eventually you can't keep up the pretense anymore, and he just knows how painfully unfunny he is. Breaking Wind, Part 1 is the movie that guy wrote after walking away from the Breaking Dawn Riff Night in a huff because no one was respecting his genius. The douchiest douche bag in the party of douche bags, and he's the one that got to write a movie.

I don't know if it would be easy to do a parody of the Twilight movies necessarily. I haven't seen the actual Friedberg and Seltzer one, Vampires Suck, so I can't make a comparison, but I have to imagine that anyone, even those two bastards, could do a better job than this. Isn't it rife for parody? Isn't the Twilight phenomenon so self-evidently stupid and shallow as to invite a well-thought out satire of its content and the hype surrounding it? That's the impression I get from the multitude of online critics and snarky YouTube commenters who all seem to have something to say about it. And yet, if this is the end result, if this is what comes of a desire to make fun of Twilight, and these are the best jokes that can be derived from this source material, than I have to imagine that these books and these movies aren't nearly as bad as people say they are. If this is the best you can do, Twilight mocking community, then clearly, there's more to this series that I'm apparently missing. I blame you for this, Twilight haters. As shitty as this movie is, the producers were just supplying for a perceived demand, and you were the ones who demanded it. Your thoughtless nerd rage invited this thing upon the world, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

This may sound strange, but I highly recommend that you see this. If you've ever said a single bad word about the Twilight movies, you need to watch this movie right now to understand what a real bad movie is. Sure, Twilight might have no plot, shallow characters, and basically exist solely as teenage girl wish fulfillment, but at least its not this...this! I recommend this movie in the same way I recommend the works of Takashi Miike, not because his movies might be good or make you feel good, but precisely because they won't. Those movies are an experience that one must undergo to call oneself a cinemaphile*, to know that that kind of film making exists, that there are movies out there that play in the darkness of our souls and live only to haunt us. The fact that Miike's films do this intentionally and artfully makes him a genius. The fact that this movie arrives at that same place by accident, while trying to entertain, makes Breaking Wind, Part 1 a blight against God.

And I don't even believe in God. That's how fucked up this movie is!




*Ha! knew I'd work that into one of these at some point! And yes, I know its cinephile, but fuck you, its my blog.

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