2. Movie 43 (2013, Dir. Various)
What Was The Comedy? An anthology of twelve comedic shorts overseen by Peter Farrelly with an all-star cast including Richard Gere, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Jackman.
Why Was It Appalling? In short: its disgusting. And not Peter Farrellys usual brand of disgusting. This takes gross-out comedy to a whole new level and then punts it into outer space. The entire focus of the film is on gratuitous shock humour with one segment focusing around a teenage girl played by Chloe Moretz menstruating, another that includes Halle Berry deliberately squirting hot sauce into her vagina, and a third starring Anna Faris as a woman with a sexual fetish for excrement. Theres more focus on being shocking and edgy than on being funny. They tried to make a gross-out comedy but forgot to add the comedy.
Who Should Have Known Better? Everybody involved.
Why Should They Have Known Better? The content should have set alarm bells ringing right from the start and the stars should have jumped ship as quickly as they could but were locked into their contracts. Something that eventually led to most of them viewing Movie 43 as a shameful part of their career before it was even released. Any film with no real plot, and such a large focus on gratuitous shock humour and bodily fluids (and this film comes pretty close to winning Bodily Fluid Bingo) should automatically be a red flag to any film professional. But the real They should have known better moment goes to several of the actors who were reportedly only paid $500 for two days of filming and were apparently lured in by the promise of potential profit sharing, which obviously never materialised in any meaningful way.