I’d almost forgotten that the last time Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn teamed up was in 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and if you asked me why I like that movie so much and am pretty indifferent on The Watch, I’d be hard-pressed to explain why. Both have very simple premises, feature largely improv performers, and The Watch has the added benefit of Jonah Hill — playing a younger, more broad version of Walter Sobchek.

Then again, Dodgeball had cleverer jokes, Vaughn in the lead (instead of Stiller), and Rip Torn, who trumps pretty much everything in the universe. It also seemed to be having a lot more fun. The Watch, on the other hand, is kind of like the unpopular kid at the playground that’s consigned itself to the tilt-a-whirl: functioning on autopilot and trying to find bits of entertainment when they come. Even the trailer has no qualms revealing the twist of aliens coming to earth, and since there’s not much else after that, for the first half hour or so, we follow Stiller around waiting for the movie to get going.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim work best in sketches. If you’re reading this, I suspect you’re a fan of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. If not, it’s a sketch show that’s best bits mock public-access television, from the strange and self-aggrandizing programs to those car commercials from the local dealer who insists on inserting himself into nearly every frame, regardless of appearance or vocal stylings.

All this is done with hyper editing, bizarre imagery, and hopelessly cheesy special effects. The trailer gives a pretty good idea.

Either way, it’s very creative but can’t last beyond a minute or so. And that’s the biggest failing of Tim and Eric’s Billion-Dollar Movie – the sketches are great, the main storyline is horrible.

I was in utter stitches at the opening commercial with Chef Goldblum (Jeff Goldblum, and the movie gets at least a star for capturing the only non-bad-ass image of Goldblum) and loved the actual billion-dollar movie itself, but then the lights go up and it all goes downhill.

Imagine if the sublime Jackass films actually forced the gang into an actual plot—and how traumatic an experience that would be.

The MPAA is a funny organization. Depending on the director, producer, or studio, it will determine a film’s overall success by slapping it with a rating that could cut its possible audience down to a third.

A few years ago, there was a dispute between the MPAA and Kevin Smith (go figure) about the title of his film, Zach and Miri Make a Porno. The organization wanted to give the film an NC-17 rating based purely on the premise and title, without taking into consideration the fact that it was a satire. After a debate, the film got released with an R rating and everyone was happy (except for those who saw the flick).

Now, another film with an iffy title and premise comes along and gets a hard R rating right out of the cage. We present to you the synopsis for A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.

Jason Sudeikis is Eric, a thirtysomething party animal famous among his close circle of friends for his lavish summer theme parties at his father’s swanky Hamptons pad. But when members of the crew start settling down, and Eric’s dad announces plans to sell the beach house, Eric decides it’s time for one last bash to go out with a proverbial bang—a good old-fashioned orgy. The only obstacles to overcome are actually convincing each of his reluctant friends to join in on the bacchanal, and an inconveniently blossoming romance with the real estate agent threatening to sell the house out from under him before the main event can even take place.

Giving credit where credit’s due, the film looks hilarious. A cast of Sudeikis, Tyler Labine, and Nick Kroll alone is enough to keep the laughs coming. When you add a pending orgy, things only get better.

Check out the first official trailer for the film and catch it when it hits theaters on September 2nd.

In an effort to bite off even more than I can chew (and since we don’t have, like, a bajillion articles published on Friday anyway), I’ve decided to take a swing at covering Parks and Recreation, a little gem of a show I’ve gotten into the past week while cooped up inside the apartment thanks to the Great Chicago Blizzard of ’11. (It even made me miss a screening of Sanctum because the city shut down. Really. Though early reports of the film say I didn’t miss much.)

One of the things that got me to check out the show, other than ennui, was the stellar reviews it’d been getting and my general desire to fill the void The Office’s lackluster season has left. Hey, they had a good run and some pretty good episodes so far, but Parks and Rec has been batting a 1,000 since its second season, which is right around when The Office started to come into its own. (And in case you’re wondering, the spate of Office comparisons are because Parks and Rec was created by two Office alums, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur.)

One of the things I admire about the show, beside its daringness to showcase an overtly Libertarian character in Ron “F*cking” Swanson and the adorable pluckiness of Amy Peohler, is the light contempt it has for the general public of the little backwards town of Pawnee. Coming from a small town myself and having lived in an even pettier one that offered hours upon hours of small-town self-righteousness just a local access channel away, it’s nice to see someone satirize this comic gold mine. It always is the same, lonely people who take themselves way too seriously over a trivial point of local government, and the subtle touch of reducing the populace’s rhetorical skills to simple chanting is a nice touch.

It’s unfortunate that Saturday Night Live has gotten a rep for being pretty unfunny in the past couple of years. Everybody will, of course, claim “the show stopped being funny when X left” but the truth of the matter is that it becomes a completely different beast every few years, starting when they made the first major cast change back in 1980.

These days, the level of writing, led by head writer Seth Meyers, has been adapted to a younger audience. With bits like music videos from The Lonely Island or the one-liners in Weekend Update, they are definitely appealing to a crowd under the age of 30. Even a skit like MacGruber, which is based on a bumbling protagonist (Will Forte) and the inevitable explosion ending isn’t exactly highbrow comedy, but mostly visual humor and random vulgarity.

Sadly, that’s exactly where the film adaptation of MacGruber picks up. It continues the trend of sight gags that don’t really pay off and more vulgarity than an uncensored episode of South Park. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of SNL, Forte, and the MacGruber skit, but the film lives up to the low expectation everyone had for it, in just being a 30 second skit stretched out into 90 minutes.