Superfast!

[StevePulaski]

Superfast! (2015)
Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Alex Ashbaugh, Dale Pavinski, and Lili Mirojnick.

Rating: ½★

Superfast! is the third film of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's, the men formerly responsible for theatrical atrocities like Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet the Spartans, to be released on video-on-demand and very few theaters across the United States rather than having them premiere on over two-thousand nationwide theaters. Contrary to many, I find this to be a good thing, as it greatly limits the number of people who will not only see these films but hear about these films as well. Unlike with mainstream theatrical releases, low key video-on-demand releases have little publicity and, unless you're in touch with the film community or the producers of certain films, your chances of a film on the independent circuit finding you before you find it are slim to none.

Superfast! is the long talked about parody from Friedberg and Seltzer that would lampoon The Fast and the Furious franchise. With an astonishing budget of $20 million, yet not even looking half as good as something made for TV, this is an unbelievably dated and stale parody for two major reasons. One, it relies on the biggest cheapshots of the characters, actors, and situational events of the series, rather than the genre cliches that make these films so predictable, a trait that Friedberg and Seltzer will ostensibly never recognize, and, secondly, with The Fast and the Furious franchise already spanning seven films, the series has had enough time to parody itself for lasting over a decade. It doesn't need a low-grade parody film to lampoon its existence; that what every film after the fifth one was designed to do.

Rather than a real plot in Superfast!, we're expected to go along with and laugh at characters that look like impersonators of those from The Fast and the Furious series. Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor is turned into a sarcastic dimwit played by Alex Ashbaugh, Vin Diesel's trash-talking Dominic Toretto is given a brain-dead, atrociously unfunny makeover by Dale Pavinski, Mia Toretto is replaced with Lili Mirojnick's vapid doppelganger, and Dio Johnson does the honors of parodying Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Luke Hobbs character. Throw in cheapshots towards the characters' thin personalities, vehicles, car-lingo, racing sequences, and overall franchise lunacy, and, despite aiming low, Superfast! can't even make the obvious funny.

The film settles for jokes that set the lowest bar and goals for the film, yet can't even manage to make those jokes hit, as everything is simply too dumb to function on numerous levels. In addition, at ninety-four minutes, trying to make this film have a cogent plot, or even exist past a Saturday Night Live skit, was an absolutely ludicrous ideas, as more than halfway through the film, we see Friedberg and Seltzer run out of gas and force the jokes to start recycling themselves.

Superfast! is as loathsome as The Starving Games, the duo's last parody effort before shifting gears to Best Night Ever, their first and only non-parody film which was so bad it might has well have stuck to the winning formula. In the end, I'm left with the baffling question as to why over $20 million was invested into a video-on-demand project by two guys who have had disintegrating appeal over the last several years. Despite probably the large sum of money they've ever been blessed to work with, Friedberg and Seltzer prove that a heavy check still can't buy witty or marginally intelligent dialog and Superfast! is another film to discard in the ever-growing barrel that is their filmography.

Starring: Alex Ashbaugh, Dale Pavinski, Lili Mirojnick, and Dio Johnson. Directed by: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.