Movie Review – Superfast!

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– Summary –

Director :  Jason Friedberg + Aaron Seltzer
Year Of Release :   2015
Principal Cast :  Alex Ashbaugh, Dale Pavinski, Lili Mirojnick, Andrea Nevado, Daniel Booko, Dio Johnson, Rogelio Douglas Jr, Chris Pang.
Approx Running Time :  99 Minutes
Synopsis:   Undercover cop Lucas White joins Vin Serento’s LA gang of illegal street racers. They are fast and they are furious and they plan to double cross LA crime kingpin Juan Carlos de la Sol who hides his cash in a downtown Taco Bell. The gangs outrageous plan is as daring as it is ridiculous and will see them towing the whole damn restaurant, at crazy speeds.

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Fast, furious, and mildly funny.

Rapidfire parody film spoofs the original 2001 Fast & Furious film (and a mixed grab-bag of the sequels), to mixed effect. Liteweight humor, overly sexual creepiness and a three-jokes-a-minute plotting make this less a straightforward narrative, as the Vampires Suck co-directors Friedberg and Seltzer (which sounds like a laxative) rip the Furious franchise to shreds. If you’re into lowbrow tits-n-ass jokes, vapid, nonsensical inanity and asinine comedy drawn from a film nearly 15 years old (so relevant, then!), Superfast will have you guffawing into your pizza box with shame you ever rented this mess.

large-screenshot2Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: Undercover police officer Lucas White (Alex Ashbaugh) enters the world of underground street racing to join a gang of street racers led by Vin Serento (Dale Pavinski) to get closer to a crime ring led by Los Angeles kingpin Juan Carlos de la Sol . The morning after losing a street race, Lucas goes to Vin’s garage with a wrecked Smart Fortwo and lands a job as a mechanic, despite objections by Vin’s friend Curtis (Daniel Booko). He also develops a relationship with Vin’s sister Jordana (Lili Mirojnick).

Superfast! is a stupid, stupid film. I’m not quite sure why it’s taken a decade and a half to make a Fast & Furious parody, especially one that riffs on the original film, but the end result is a lazy, annoyingly predictable, lame-ass attempt at taking known characters and making them…. funny. The fact that Fast & Furious is a silly franchise anyway probably makes it ripe for comedy send-up, but this film is the nadir of racing comedy films. Hell, it’s worse than Need For Speed, and that film wasn’t even trying to be hilarious.

At least if you’re ripping on a popular film franchise, you get the casting right. Thankfully, Superfast delivers on that account. Alex Ashbaught’s California-accented whitebread undercover cop, Lucas White (a riff on both Paul Walker and Lucas Black’s leading roles in the Furious films), is spot on hilarious. super-fast-CastsDale Pavinski’s bald-headed riff on Vin Diesel (the character’s name is Vin Sorento, sounds awfully similar to one-time Aussie comedian Vince Sorrento) is on-point funny, while Andrea Nevado’s parody of Michelle Rodriguez’ butch-lesbian Letty character actually made me LOL here and there. Dio Johnson makes a nice effort to parody Dwayne Johnson’s Cobb, while Lili Mirojnick’s Jordana (a play on Jordanna Brewster’s Mia Toretto from the Furious films) adds sex appeal. Generally, the cast do solid work trying to imitate their parody focus, so good on them, I guess.

They’re let down by a terrible script, and awful humor. It’s like Friedberg and Seltzer are a couple of frat boys who’ve sat around a drug lab smoking weed and thinking half the shit they come up with is hilarious. That juvenile, addled sense of humor died out with Naked Gun, lacking both Leslie Nielsen’s po-faced deadpan ability or a Zucker/Abrahms sense of timing. Instead of building up the humor, Superfast simply crams is as many non-sequiturs, gutter-level jokes and asides as it can, hoping something sticks in this hot mess. The film’s rat-a-tat approach to the parody aspect of the film misses more than it hits, a laughably lame attempt to capitalize on a franchise that’s self-aware anyway, almost parody-proof with its own silliness.

If you’re seeking genuinely awful funny material, any cat video on YouTube will probably suffice. Superfast’s money-wasting production value, ridiculously vapid plot (even for a parody, this is rank) and dead-on casting are a horrid mish-mash of styles and slick, neon-and-afterglow infused cinematography (which, I should note, is probably the best aspect of the entire film): the whole thing is soul-crushingly asinine, and should never be actively sought out as something to watch.

D-Rating

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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3 thoughts on “Movie Review – Superfast!

  1. Friedberg and Seltzer never fail to write to the worst movie jokes ever.

    1. Aside from one or two legit moments of comedic brilliance, the film is a total crapfest. Avoid.

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