The men behind the wheel are Aaron Seltzer and Jason Fried-berg. They had a hand in composing the inaugural edition of the "Scary Movie" franchise and wrote and directed last year's "Date Movie," which attempted to beat up on romantic-comedy ridiculousness. Maybe they didn't know the superior "Not Another Teen Movie" sufficiently assaulted the genre five years earlier.
In any case, with "Epic Movie," Seltzer and Friedberg are milking a dried-up cow. What you miss most is the shamelessness and wit that the actors Anna Faris and Regina Hall have brought to four installments of "Scary Movie." In lieu of those two, there are exploding pimples, a tongue frozen on a pole, and industrial-strength projectile vomit.
The willful sloppiness and retrograde gags make "Epic Movie," which was not shown to critics, an inevitable byproduct of our Internet video era. It seems downloaded and projected onto the screen, a failing online-film-school project paid for and put out by a Hollywood movie studio. That said, very little on YouTube is this unentertaining. (Of course, the other four paying -- and chuckling -- customers with whom I shared my viewing experience would beg to differ.)
Somehow "Epic Movie" managed to lure talented funny people into the proceedings (so that's where the budget went). Jennifer Coolidge, Fred Willard, Crispin Glover, Darrell Hammond, Kevin McDonald, and Kal Penn are here. So is Carmen Electra, who's neither funny nor talented, which puts her in ideal company with her directors.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.
